


Through the Gay Days

by ama



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Jewish Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Casual Sex, Ensemble Cast, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Possibly Unrequited Love, Queer History, Queer Themes, Rare Pairings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-12 10:58:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 37,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10489365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ama/pseuds/ama
Summary: “When you got to a camp, you just immediately sought out the other gay guys, just for the reinforcement of knowing you were not alone.” -- Pvt. Ben Small, Army Air Corps.Four gay men arrive at Camp Toccoa in 1942, each thinking that they are alone. They're used to being alone and used to keeping secrets. But when Gene Roe, George Luz, Ed Tipper, and Chuck Grant meet, they realize that the war has shaken everything up, and together the four friends try to make it through the worst of the war--and the best.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to canadasuperhero for her critique, rivlee for her encouragement, and amanivuote on tumblr for her art. Thank you also to everyone who has sent encouraging messages, reblogged snippets, and helped get people excited about this Big Bang. I've really enjoyed the whole process, so kudos to the mods and all the other participants!
> 
> I also wanted to mention that much of this fic was inspired by my academic studies, especially the book _Coming Out Under Fire_ , by Allen Berube, which also provided the summary quote. So if at any point you find yourself thinking "that sounds unrealistic for the time period," please know that in some cases I actually toned down real-life stories from real-life veterans; for example, a character refers to his lover using only his initial, but in a single normal letter instead of a three-year series of sexually explicit letters. (Similarly, two characters share an intimate moment in an Army train berth, even knowing there is someone in the berth above--not only did this happen, but it's downright tame compared to the real-life private who lost his virginity in a foursome on an Army train.) History was so cool, you guys, you don't even know.

 

_Dear Louisa,_

_I got your last letter—and the one before that, and the one before that, and I really appreciate you thinking of me. I’m sorry I haven’t responded as quick, but as you can imagine, boot camp doesn’t leave us with much free time. The guys keep ragging on me, thinking I’ve got a girlfriend writing me a dozen love letters a day, and saying that the next one will be a Dear John letter if I don’t write back quicker. I’ve told them you’re married but that doesn’t stop them any._

_Speaking of which, how is Phil doing? You’ll let me know if he gets called up, won’t you? I worry about it—not because I have any doubts he’d be a top-notch soldier, but because Lord I can’t imagine what you’d do without him, even for just a few months. You’d worry yourself into the grave or at least get a faceful of wrinkles, and we can’t let that happen, can we?_

_I think of you and the rest of our friends often. As a matter of fact, I think I might have found at least one likeminded soul in my company. It’s hard to tell—we don’t get too many opportunities to go into town here, so nightlife is limited. Certainly I haven’t had the opportunity to get into the kind of scandalous situations you drag me to back home (I’ll be discreet for the sake of the censor). But there’s one guy here who reminds me an_ _awful_ _lot of Chris, just as funny and wild and, on occasion, campy. But who knows if that’s the same thing here as it is back home._

_I’ve also gotten close to one fellow in particular. It’s not the same kind of instant connection I had with R, and I suppose really we don’t know each other all that well yet, but we’re buddies all the same. It makes it easier, you know, having a buddy, even if—well, I’m sure you know what I’m thinking. I’ll let you know more once he and I get to know each other better. It’s been a long day and I think I’ll stop here._

_By the way, I liked the perfume in your last letter—what did Phil think about that, huh? But I am a little miffed at the thought of you all going to balls without me! Mostly I haven’t been that homesick, but that did it. Give my regards to Phil, Chris, and Denise. And R, if your paths happen to cross, I suppose. (No letters from that quarter, although I’m not surprised there.)_

_Yours,  
_ _E Tipper_

“Tip, tell me you’re not writing another goddamn letter,” Liebgott said, and Tipper’s hand jerked, making a weird gash out of the final _r_ of his name. He shrugged and tried to be casual about folding the letter up.

“Hey, Joe, just ’cuz you’re not as popular as I am—”

“Yeah, yeah, you’ve got a dame on each arm and one more stuffed in your foot locker,” Joe said, shaking his head. “If you keep writing letters like that, we’re not going to have any time to fight the war.”

For a breathless second Tip wondered if Joe was going to push and ask him who he was writing to, but the other man’s interest had waned. It was a quiet night in the barracks. They didn’t have training (barring a surprise attack from Sobel, which was always a legitimate fear) and it was a Tuesday evening, so no one had passes. A few other men were also writing letters; others were playing cards, smoking with their pals, passing around newspapers and photos from back home. Joe was stretched out across his bunk with a newspaper, and Tipper glanced at the header to see what he was reading. There were all kinds of options here. Some guys read the Army publications, some picked up the local paper, and others were patient enough to wait for days-old copies of their favorites from home. Tipper didn’t recognize the paper Joe was reading—he squinted at the header but the letters were swimming and he couldn’t make out a title.

“Hey, Joe, what’ve you got there?”

“Oh, uh—” Joe flushed right down to his neck, and tucked the paper away with the same furtiveness Tipper had adopted to put away his letter. “Nothin’. Just the news. Same as usual. Fuck Germany, fuck Japan, God bless America. You know.”

He looked away to fumble for a cigarette in his jacket pocket, and Tipper watched him covertly for another minute. There was something about Joe Liebgott that interested him. Well, plenty of things about Liebgott interested him—his caustic jokes were side-splittingly funny sometimes, and he had an endless repertoire of stories from his time as a cabbie and a barber that he could dole out at a moment’s notice. When you were on an endless march with nothing to focus on but the pain in your feet, it paid to be marching next to Liebgott.

Then there was the fact that he was one of the only guys in the unit who really didn’t seem concerned about going to war. If you got them alone for a minute, almost everyone would admit they were apprehensive about _something_ —hell, forget getting through the war, half of them were worried about getting through jump training. Liebgott never showed any sign of doubt, and Tipper found that kind of confidence reassuring. He and Liebgott had been bunkmates when they first arrived at Toccoa, and fast friends ever since.

Still. There was this feeling about Joe—that he was hiding something. Tipper had no real hint as to what that might be, but he was curious.

Especially because he was hiding something, too.

“Hey Lieb—” he started.

He was cut off as the door to the barracks opened and a handful of guys started whistling. Two recruits, Luz and Perconte, were coming in from the showers with towels wrapped around their waists. At the sound of the whistles, Perconte rolled his eyes and muttered what were no doubt a few choice words, but Luz only laughed and received the attention with a gracious, feminine bow.

“Hey, Perco, I’ll give you five bucks to take that off,” Bill Guarnere called, in that Philly accent that made his voice seem twice as loud as anyone else’s.

“Yeah? How’s about you go fuck yourself, Gonorrhea?”

“Well wait just a minute, Frank,” Luz grinned. “Five dollars is no joke.” He sidled up to Guarnere’s bunk and wiggled his hips. “Hey, Bill, what’do I got to do for ten, huh?”

“Get outta here, ya invert,” Guarnere snorted as he pushed him away to jeers and laughter.

“Now, Private Luz, are you experiencing some strange and uncomfortable feelings?” Malarkey said with mock seriousness. “Do you need to have a confidential meeting with the chaplain? He’s here to help, after all.”

“Or how about Sobel?” someone called from the corner, prompting another round of laughter.

“Oh, I’m very comfortable with my feelings, Malark,” Luz simpered, and Tipper shook his head in wonderment.

He had a feeling about Luz, too. That he was hiding something—or not hiding something, as the case may be. Parading for everyone to see, so no one would think to look for anything else. It wasn’t a bad strategy, although he had no real way to _know_.

But hey, it didn’t hurt to look, did it? Tipper had spent a good deal of his life pointedly not looking at men, and he appreciated how quickly the Army had beat that out of him. They were all living in close quarters, they were all more fit than they had been a month ago, and averting his gaze every time he saw a man in dishabille would be more suspicious than looking. And if he had to be honest, the way Luz shimmied around when he was playing queer didn’t look half bad. No harm in peeking, right?

Until.

Until Luz turned to head back to his bunk, and locked eyes with him.

Tipper’s heart dropped into his stomach, as fast as a would-be paratrooper diving off the practice tower and hitting the grass hard.

 _Say something_ , a panicked voice in his mind urged. _Make it a joke, say something quick_ —but his mind was absolutely blank and he could feel a dull flush clouding his cheeks as the seconds stretched on.

Luz raised one eyebrow, uncharacteristically serious, and Tipper thought _oh fuck_.

“Don’t be a jerk, Luz,” a mild voice said suddenly. Attention had moved elsewhere, and most people didn’t hear him, but Tipper’s head whipped around to see Chuck Grant sitting on the bed opposite him with a smile playing across his mouth. Their eyes met for a brief second of _you?_ / _yeah_ , and Tipper slumped against the frame of his bed with a relieved sigh. Luz—that motherfucker— _winked_ as he sashayed past Tip’s bunk, and Tipper glared at him.

The whole exchange had taken maybe forty-five seconds, but his heart was still racing a mile a minute, and he squeezed his eyes shut and took a few deep breaths. Tipper had never gotten caught before. He had confided to a friend back home a few years ago, and Dennis had introduced him to a few other guys, and that was how he’d met every gay man he knew. A friend of a friend of a friend. It was easy that way, safe. He’d thought about what might happen if a stranger caught him, of course, but he hadn’t realized how tangible the fear could be. Jesus, his heart was still racing so fast it made him dizzy.

Then he shot up, grinning, and fished around in his trunk for his letter to Louis.

_P.S. I was right about the fellow I mentioned—just like Chris! Made another new pal as well. Try not to get too jealous. Love, Tip._

—

“Who else, you think?” Luz said as his nimble fingers flicked through the deck of cards. They were sitting on some pilfered crates, tucked behind one of the barracks. It wasn’t really private—what could you expect from an Army camp?—but no one was close enough to hear them, and his breezy voice wouldn’t generate any suspicion. Still, Chuck’s eyes surveyed the immediate area carefully before he replied.

“You really think there are more?” he asked skeptically. He picked up his hand—two eights, a four, a jack, and an ace. Could be worse.

“’Course there are,” Tipper said with confidence.

“Nurses’ stations are riddled with queers,” Luz shrugged, waving his cigarette around. “So’s the typists’ pool, everybody knows that. So why can’t Easy have a few?”

“We’re not nurses, we’re paratroopers.”

“Not yet, Corporal Grant,” he said in Sobel’s nasally drawl. Chuck rolled his eyes.

“All I’m saying is, few enough people volunteer to be paratroopers. Odds aren’t in our favor. Are you gonna ante in or what?”

Luz tossed an (unlit) cigarette into the pot.

“Yeah, yeah. How many?”

“Two.” He set aside the four and the ace—jacks had always been luckier for him.

“Dealer takes two.”

“Come on, Chuck, four guys out of a hundred and forty isn’t bad odds. Gimme three.”

Speaking of odds—two more jacks! Chuck smiled to himself.

“Anyone ever tell you you have no poker face?” Luz said. “I fold.”

“I’ll raise,” Tipper said gamely. He pushed two more cigarettes into the center. Chuck followed, and then they turned over their hands—two pair, kings and queens, against a full house. Tipper groaned. “All right, take it. Your turn to deal.”

“Thank you.” Chuck swept the small pile closer to him and started shuffling the cards. “And since I’m feeling generous, I’ll bite. Say there is another one here. Who do you think it is?”

“I say Liebgott,” Tipper replied immediately, and Luz rolled his eyes again. A few days ago, he had told them he thought Liebgott was “hiding something.” Luz thought he was full of it. Chuck, who knew Liebgott a little better, had his own idea of what might be pinging Tipper’s radar, but he wasn’t about to make any suggestions.

“He said who do you _think_ , not who do you _hope_ ,” he said, elbowing Tipper in the ribs. “You know who my money’s on?”

Slowly, he turned his head and looked around him. There were a handful of Easy guys milling about; it was a rare afternoon off, because Sobel had a weekend pass but none of the enlisted men did, and people were taking  advantage of the sunshine and the warm spring air. Luz’s eyes passed over guys walking about, wrestling, jogging—and settled on Eugene Roe, sitting against one of the new barracks buildings, his brow furrowed as he flipped slowly through the medic’s manual. Luz looked at Chuck and Tipper again, making eye contact, and jerked his chin in Roe’s direction.

“ _Really_?”

“I don’t buy it,” Chuck declared.

“C’mon, guys, I’m serious.”

“What makes you think?” Tipper asked skeptically. “He’s not very… you know…”

He flapped his hand in a vaguely effete gesture.

“Neither are you or Chuck.”

“I am when you get a couple of drinks in me,” Tip grinned.

“You know, we’ve really got to do that. The first weekend we actually get to keep our passes, the three of us need to find a bar with a back room or something—”

“Focus, gentlemen,” Chuck interjected. “How many?”

“Give me one.”

Chuck dealt a card to him, and then gave Tipper three and took three for himself. He added another king to his hand—now he had the kings of diamonds, clubs, and spades. Not bad, not bad. The game went around quickly this time.

“Anyway,” Luz continued. “Roe keeps to himself, doesn’t talk much. As far as we can tell, he _likes_ everybody, and everybody likes him, but he’s nobody’s _buddy_ , right? The way I figure, he doesn’t want to get too close to anybody so he doesn’t have to confess any secrets. Damn it, Chuck, again?”

Chuck smirked and claimed the pot.

“That’s what happens when you pay attention to the cards, Luz. And I’m not sold on the doc. Sure, maybe there’s someone else in Easy, but not talking a lot isn’t enough to peg a guy as gay.”

“No, but there is the photo.”

Luz paused dramatically, and Chuck and Tipper exchanged an exasperated glance.

“We’re not gonna ask,” Tipper told him.

“You’re no fun, you know that?” Luz huffed. “Here’s the deal: I was bunked across from Roe for a few weeks when we got here, right? When they didn’t have enough space for half of us? And I’m telling you, he’s got a _photo_. I don’t know what’s—or who’s—in it, but he kept it on him all the time. I saw him take it out of his pocket and look at it at least once or twice a day, sometimes for a couple minutes.”

“So he’s got a girl back home,” Chuck shrugged. “Half the men in the company have a photo like that.”

“Sure they do. But I asked Roe if he had a girl, and _he said no_ ,” Luzz declared triumphantly.

“Okay, George.”

“For fuck’s sake. Hey, let’s go all or nothing, huh?” Luz gestured at the pile of cigarettes in front of Chuck. “I’m going to go over right now and find out who’s in Roe’s photo. If it’s a broad, you win. If it’s a man, I do.”

“The photo could be anybody,” Tipper pointed out. “How do we know it’s romantic? It could be his mom or his brother or, hell, his _dog_. Could be a house he wants to buy when he gets back, you don’t know.”

“Okay, so we’ll say _boyfriend_ I win, _girlfriend_ Chuck wins, family member, pet, or inanimate object you win. Friends are suspect, so we’ll say no payout if we can’t confirm or deny that he’s screwing them.”

Tipper considered it for a moment, and shrugged.

“Sure, why not? I’m game.”

He pushed his modest stack of cigarettes into the center and then they both looked at Chuck, who hesitated.

“Scared, Grant?” Luz taunted.

“Of losing? No. But you smoke like a chimney, and when you lose I’m going to have to listen to you complain that you don’t have any Lucky Strikes left.”

“No fucking chance,” Luz grinned. He stubbed out his cigarette and stood. “C’mon, follow my lead.”

He shoved his hands into his pockets and sauntered towards Roe.

“Hey, doc!” he called. He had to repeat himself twice before Roe finally looked up.

“Hey, Luz. Sorry ’bout that—still not used to thinking of myself as a medic. Couple hours training and a book, and suddenly you’re a doctor. Seems like it should take longer.”

“Well that’s reassuring,” Tipper said.

“Mind if we join you?” Luz asked.

“Sure, go right ahead.”

Roe looked bemused as they settled around him. Luz was right—Roe wasn’t a sociable kind of guy, and most people were perfectly willing to let him alone if that was what he wanted. He was most often found at the edge of a crowd, occasionally looking in and enjoying the conversation, but happy to be out of the spotlight. Chuck could sympathize with that. He sat down next to Roe and leaned against the wall. Tipper sat on his other side, and Luz plopped down right in front of him, tilting his face up towards the Georgia sun.

“It’s starting to get hot again,” he commented. “Man, I hate this summer bullshit. Especially down here. New England boys, we’re not meant to sweat our balls off, at least not this early in the year. And this humidity, Jesus Christ.”

“The humidity is the worst part,” Chuck agreed. “California gets just as hot, but it’s not so bad when it’s dry. Here you feel like you’re suffocating just walking around.”

“It’s worse in Louisiana,” said Roe with a little smile at the corner of his mouth.

“Yeah, not surprised. Hey, where in Louisiana are you from, doc?” Luz asked.

“Well, I was born in one of those little towns on the bayou nobody’s ever heard of. But I’ve been living in New Orleans since I was, oh, fourteen maybe.”

“That reminds me, what was in that photo you had, huh?”

“What photo?” Roe said in a polite but disinterested tone.

“You know, the one you had the first couple of weeks. I think you used to keep it—yeah, that pocket.”

Roe’s hand had been drifting towards his left breast pocket; as soon as Luz called attention to the motion, he froze, and faint splotches of pink arose beneath his cheekbones.

“Oh, right. It’s…”

“I thought it might be someone from back home,” Luz interrupted cheerfully. “Most fellas have a couple of those pictures, right? I know Bill’s got one of his broad. Me, I’ve got a copy of my parents’ wedding picture in my footlocker, and then my oldest niece, last week she mailed me one of her school photos. Real cute kid.”

“I’ve got one too,” Tipper piped up. “Here, see—my older sister got married two weeks ago, and she sent me a photo.”

He took a picture out of his trouser pocket and held it up. The subject was a pretty, light-haired woman in a floral print dress, leaning on the arm of a man in a crisp white Navy uniform. The appropriate congratulations were expressed, and Chuck took a moment to appreciate how neatly Tipper and Luz had trapped Roe into showing off his own picture. They had done their best to put him at ease instead of interrogating him. Now it would be downright rude for him to refuse, not when they looked at him with such expectant yet polite gazes. For a moment, Roe’s lips pressed into a thin line, and then he took the photo out of his pocket.

The man in the picture was wearing a uniform. For a second Chuck thought he was wearing an Army service uniform, albeit with his cap at a more daring angle than most soldiers would attempt, but then he noticed that the pins on his lapel bore the wrong insignia. In place of the gold crossed rifles there was a brass globe and anchor—Marine Corps. Chuck was impressed. You had to be tough to make it in the Marines. Not  as tough as a paratrooper, he thought loyally, but tough enough.

The man looked like he knew it, too. He had the look of a fellow who would be scrawny out of uniform, but his shoulders were squared and his chin was tilted up proudly. A faint smile touched his lips, and his heavy-lidded eyes were staring straight at the camera. He had dark hair which escaped from his cap in a tight curl. It was oddly endearing, that little curl. It was just about the only aspect of his appearance that made him look young, even though he couldn’t be over twenty-five at the most.

“My cousin,” Roe explained. Out of the corner of his eye, Chuck saw Tipper flash Luz a triumphant grin, but Luz gave a little shake of his head. _Not yet_. “He’s—we’re real close. He joined up with the Marines in ’42 and sent me that. To remind me we’re all in it together. You know.”

“He doesn’t look much like you,” Luz observed.

Roe’s fingers twitched, like he meant to fold the picture up and put it away. There were faint creases in it already, and one corner was permanently dog-eared.

“’Spose not.”

“But that happens,” Chuck said. “I’ve got two brothers, and I bet they could walk right by us now and you wouldn’t think we were related.”

He couldn’t help notice that Roe seemed relieved at that.

“Still, he’s not a bad-looking guy, huh?” Luz said, nudging Roe with his knee.

“I guess,” Roe said stiffly.

“Is he single?”

“No.”

“No? What’s his girl’s name?”

“Mary,” Roe replied, but even Chuck had noticed the pause before he answered.

“Brunette, blonde, or redhead?”

“I don’t—what are you asking all these questions for, huh?” Roe demanded.

“No reason,” Luz shrugged, but he met Roe’s gaze and the two of them stared at each other for a minute. Luz raised an eyebrow.

“What are you asking?” Roe said slowly.

“I’m asking… did you really think you were the only one in the company?”

Roe’s gaze flickered first to Tipper and then to Chuck; he did his best to look friendly and accommodating. Then the medic’s whole body went limp with relief as he sighed and fell back against the wall.

“Jesus Christ, you scared me.”

“Sorry doc,” Tipper grinned. “Who’s in the photo?”

“That’s Merriell Shelton. He’s my—I met him, must have been six years ago now. First person I ever talked to about it.”

His thumb smoothed back and forth over the dog-eared corner of the picture, and Chuck felt his heart twinge unexpectedly. He’d always considered himself more of a realist than a romantic, but there was something sweet about seeing a man keeping another man’s photo close to him. Maybe it was the fact that, unlike most guys in the unit, he couldn’t shove pictures of his sweetheart under your nose and brag about his sex life until you died of boredom.

“He’s not really your cousin, is he?” Luz asked.

“No, he ain’t. Good excuse though, huh?”

“Sure, doc, you had me fooled for a whole two seconds. Are you fucking him?”

“He’s in the South Pacific at the moment,” Roe said dryly.

“That’s a yes.” Luz beamed and held out his hand. “Pay up, Grant.”

—

A branch cracked like a gunshot beneath Tipper’s boot, and they all froze for thirty seconds before breaking out in laughter, muffling their snorts behind their hands.

“We’re going to get _shot_ ,” Luz said in a hoarse whisper, but Tipper waved him off.

“No we’re not. Nobody’s doing maneuvers tonight.”

“We’re going to get _lost_ is what we are,” Gene countered.

“You’re the country boy, aren’t you?” Chuck grinned. “You can help us find our way back.”

“Hey, I live in New Orleans! Just ’cause I was born on the bayou doesn’t mean I know shit about the woods in Georgia—”

“What’s the difference between a bayou and a swamp, anyway?” Luz mused.

“Difference is I’m gonna pop you in the mouth if you call it a swamp.”

They all laughed at that, and Tipper clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle a yelp that would’ve been even louder than the branch.

After two hours of trying and failing to get a minute of privacy in the packed local bars, they had given up. Talbert had once told Chuck about this little spot in the woods where he took his town girl, and Chuck was certain he could find it. Tab had had his weekend pass revoked for a uniform violation, so they shouldn’t be disturbed— _if_ they ever got there. They had each had a few beers before leaving, and Gene was skeptical about Chuck’s ability to make out the thin dirt path in the moonlight. They teased him as they stomped through the woods, giddy with the booze and the thrill of sneaking around, but finally, with a noise of triumph, Chuck burst into a little clearing dominated by a huge dogwood tree that has dusted the grass with white flowers. There was a wooden bench beneath the tree that could probably fit two of them. It was a nice little lover’s lane, but perhaps small for four.

Chuck claimed a seat on the bench, and immediately Tipper and Luz began to squabble over the remaining space. Gene snorted at their foolishness and sat down among the dogwood roots. Eventually Tipper flopped on the ground next to him, and Chuck knocked smartly on the armrest and declared, “Order, order!”

“And here I thought we were in the woods to get _away_ from all the formal stuff,” Gene lamented. “Do we have to call you _sergeant_?”

“Now that you mention it…” Chuck grinned, and was met with boos.

“Hey, hey, he’s got a point,” Luz said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Not about the rank, but it couldn’t hurt to get a little organized, right? Come up with a nickname, some slogans maybe, really increase our feeling of brotherly unity. You know what the gays in the canteen and the nurse’s barracks call themselves?” He paused and grinned. “The Fruit Bowl.” This garnered another round of breathless laughter, and his voice climbed. “I mean it! I’m serious, completely serious—because see there’s three guys with the nurses who don’t do lunch with the rest of us because they’ve got to feed the infirmary, so they eat with the cooks, and three or four of _them_ are queer too. They’ve got a regular organization going.”

“Pansies with Parachutes,” Tipper managed to squeeze out, and that set them all reeling again. Gene tipped onto his back and landed with a soft puff on the dogwood flowers.

“Who’s keeping track of the meeting minutes?” he said with a shaking voice when he could manage words again. “I’ll be treasurer.”

“Let’s put out a newsletter,” Tipper suggested.

“Hey now, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.” Luz cleared his throat and adopted a serious voice. He turned to Chuck. “Sergeant Chairfairy, would you care to call the meeting to order?”

“Isn’t that what I’ve been trying to do?”

“Yes sir, of course sir. Now, we need to establish some membership rules. Number one, must be an active homo to register—”

Tipper’s hand shot into the air.

“How active is active?”

“Oh, must suck one cock a week minimum, for sure.”

“ _Ahem_.” Gene raised his eyebrow with an over-exaggerated frown.

“Or, I don’t know, a signed affidavit to suck weekly cock when the opportunity presents itself. Although I must say you’re being _awfully_ picky.”

“I’m doing my best to support the troops,” Gene said faithfully. “If Shelton thought I was running around back home, he’d be no use at all on the front lines, would he?”

“I’ll do my best, too,” Tipper said with a lecherous grin, and Gene shoved him back into the flower pile.

“You know, the first thing they tell us when we come out in LA is to find a clique like this,” Chuck said thoughtfully. “Find it, stick with it, and don’t fuck anybody in it. Bad enough that everyone knows everyone—no need to make it messier than it already is.”

“Aww,” Tipper pouted.

“Hush, you.”

“You must have more guys out there, because if we followed that rule in Detroit, we’d never fuck _anybody_ ,” Tipper said. “Or we’d have no friends.”

“That’s kinda what it’s like in New Orleans,” Gene said. He thought he might be smiling, even though there was a sour taste in his mouth. “ _I_ don’t have gay friends so much. Just Shelton. When you’re looking for people—” He fumbled over the words. He’d never talked about his sex life with anyone except Merriell, and that was different. “If you’re looking for other guys, they just kind of assume you’re looking for sex. I’ve heard there are parties and things, but the only ones I know of, they don’t invite Cajuns or coloreds.”

Tipper cocked his head.

“Don’t invite _what_?”

“Cajuns.”

“I thought Cajun just meant someone from Louisiana.”

“Nope.” Up until six months ago he’d never had to explain what Cajun meant, but in his time in the Army he’d developed a succinct lecture on Cajun History 101, and he launched into it with little preamble. “Way back before the Revolutionary War, a bunch of French folk lived in Arcadia, up around Canada. Then the British took it over, and we fought back for a while but lost pretty badly, and moved down to Louisiana. We’ve always been kind of separate from the other people in Louisiana, because most of us speak French more than English, and lots of folk are pretty poor and live on the _bayou_.” He flashed a stern glance at Luz, who grinned. “So some people don’t associate with us, with is okay by me. We’ve got our own kind of talking and praying and cooking, and I like that just fine. Probably most Louisiana food you’ve heard of is really Cajun—which is kind of a mix of French and African and Indian.”

“But you are _white_ , aren’t you?” he asked curiously.

“Sure,” he shrugged. “Or at least we’re not colored, most of us. I’ve got a couple of cousins who have some Choctaw in ’em, but I don’t think my family does. I’m only half Cajun, anyway. Like I said, people just kind of treat us separate. Don’t know why, that’s just how it’s been.”

He tried to keep his voice level, but inside he was begging them not to poke too much. When he first arrived at Toccoa he’d gotten into a long conversation with some of the other recruits, where they had pressed him for more details about relationships between Cajuns and their neighbors, and a few fellows had looked at him funny when he mentioned casually how much time he’d spent in the county jail for no good reason. Funnily enough, the city boys hadn’t batted an eye, but the nice guys from small towns in the Midwest tended to think you couldn’t get jailed for _no_ reason. And then he’d gotten flustered and slipped up, called non-Cajuns “les Americans” out of habit more than anything else. _Everybody_ had gone after him for that. _Well if you’re not ah-mair-ee-cahn, what are you then?_

But it turned out he had nothing to worry about. Tipper looked more thoughtful than accusatory, and Chuck’s next question was simply “Do you know French, then?”

“Oui, bien sur. French was my first language. My dad spoke English, but my mama always talked to me in French.”

“Does that help you with the guys?” Tipper grinned.

“Shelton’s Cajun too,” Gene chuckled. “Maybe we bonded over it, but I don’t think it made him hot under the collar or anything.”

“Hey, why do you call the guy you’re screwing by his last name?” Luz said, poking Gene with the toe of his boot. “You think you’d be on a first name basis by now, huh?”

“Everybody calls him that. He doesn’t like his first name.”

“What is it?”

“Not telling.”

“You’re no fun.”

“A man’s got to be loyal, don’t he?” he teased.

“Nonsense, doc—men are dogs, you know that,” Tipper countered. He was  smiling, but Gene thought he could hear a bittersweet note in his voice. He clicked his tongue and rested a hand on Tipper’s knee.

“Pauvre cher. Dites-moi.”

Tipper batted his eyelashes at that, until Gene told him it was just pity talk, and then he sighed dramatically and shrugged.

“Nothing really. You got me thinking about this guy back home. Roger. We were seeing each other for a few months, but he didn’t show up to the party my friends threw the day before I left and he hasn’t written me since. We weren’t very serious, per se, but you’d think that if you and your fellow can make it work over two thousand miles, I could get a postcard or two.”

They all assured him that this was a perfectly reasonable expectation.

“But hey, you’ve got the whole camp to look out for now,” Luz suggested, and that seemed to cheer him up.

“That’s true. Do you think there are any more guys in Easy?”

“I’m not saying anything this time,” Chuck said grimly. “I didn’t think _you_ were gay,” he said to Gene. “No offense.”

“None taken. I don’t know if there’s anybody else… how would we even find out? Isn’t it mostly you guess and get lucky?”

“Pretty much,” Luz shrugged.

“You know, some of the other Army camps do drag shows,” Tipper told them. “I saw an article about it—they did _This is the Army_ at Fort MacArthur. That’d be a good way to find other queers. God, I hope they do one here. I’ll be first in line.”

“Really?” Chuck said with a note of distaste in his voice. “I’ve never really liked drag.”

“I’ve always wanted to try it,” Luz said thoughtfully. “Is it any fun?”

“Oh, you’d love it. Me and my friends do drag all the time. For a really good ball you’ve got to go into Chicago, take the whole weekend, but sometimes we’ll just go over to somebody’s apartment with as much makeup and clothes as we can, and we swap stuff and make each other up and everything. And there’s music playing and everybody’s smoking and boozing so it gets hot as hell and we’re all dancing and falling over each other in high heels.”

“And you feel like an elephant stuffed into pantyhose,” Chuck interjected.

“Maybe _you_ do,” Luz grinned. He gestured at Tipper. “Look at those cheekbones—you really think this guy’s ever felt ugly a day in his life?”

Any other time, Tipper might have given an “aw shucks” and shrugged; tonight he preened, turning his head this way and then the other. He stood up and strutted the length of the little clearing, swinging his hips and straightening his back and probably doing a half-dozen other things Gene couldn’t pick out that changed his walk into a woman’s walk. They laughed and whistled, but beneath that he was impressed.

“What about you, Gene?” Tipper called.

“Me? No thank you,” he chuckled. “Only time I’ve ever seen folk do drag is at Mardi Gras, and it’s not my thing.”

Tipper pouted, and pulled him up anyway.

“Fine, you can be my escort.”

Gene bowed courteously and proffered his arm, and they swirled around the clearing again.

“Hey, what about your upcoming musical career, huh?” Luz called. “Can you sing, doc? Together the two of you could make a good Johnny and Eileen.”

“Not as good as you, I’m sure,” Gene chuckled.  Luz took the bait.

“Well, I thought we were taking that for granted.” He stood and grabbed Chuck’s hand, pulling him into a loose jig next to Tipper and Gene. “ _This is the Army, Mister Jones! No private rooms or telephones—you had your breakfast in bed before, but you won’t have it there anymore!_ ”

They danced around for a few minutes, kicking their heels and running through the song a few more times, and then finally, with several dips and twirls, finished and collapsed in a pile in front of the bench. Gene was leaning against a wooden pole, which was uncomfortable; he shifted so he was mostly leaning against Luz, which was more comfortable, even if Luz elbowed him a little bit at first.

“You know what song I always thought sounded gay?” Chuck said suddenly. “It’s—oh, what’s it called. The one Frank Sinatra does. I think Bing Crosby’s done it too but I like Sinatra’s version better.”

“Oh, I know the one you mean,” Tipper snapped his fingers. “My Buddy.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Gene agreed immediately. “I remember the first time I heard that on the radio. I was out with some of the fellows from work and I damn near broke a rib trying not to laugh.”

“Come on, guys, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Luz said with a grin. “It sounds normal to me. _Nights are long since you went away… I think about you all through the day…_ ”

“ _My buddy, my buddy, no buddy quite so true_ —” Tipper joined in in a high warble. Chuck was nodding along, and on the next line all four of them were singing in a mishmash of voices that were more or less in tune.

“ _Miss your voice, the touch of your hand. Just long to know that you understand, my buddy, my buddy, your buddy misses you_ …”

They finished that song, too, and then they were quiet for a while. It was nice. It was a beautiful night, and it had been a long time since Gene had been around people he was comfortable just being quiet with. They were all leaning on each other in a propped-up little pile, and he got the sense that this wasn’t a one-off thing. Even if they couldn’t sneak off in the middle of a warzone for a few drinks in the woods, they were going to be friends.

—

In his time at Toccoa, Luz had received his fair share of passes from other guys in the battalion. It came with the territory when you played the camp queer. He had turned most of them down without much difficulty, because he liked where he stood with his fellows. People _liked_ him. He was good old Luz, always good for a laugh, the guy who had now earned his wings along with the rest of them. And sure, sucking off a couple of guys behind the canteen wouldn’t change _much_ , but maybe it would make a handful avoid him, and even a few could change the atmosphere. He figured it was better to play it safe.

But he was only human, after all. He couldn't turn down _every_ offer.

“Hey, Luz.”

The voice was raspy and low—he would have missed it in the babble of noise that came from the open door, if he hadn’t been expecting it.

“Toye.”

The other man hovered just outside the doorway and waited for Luz to say something, but Luz didn’t respond. He knew how this worked. He had to be careful. A man in his position couldn’t make the first move. He stared dreamily up at the fat moon, and blew a wobbly smoke ring.

“Got a smoke?”

“Nope.”

He could feel Toye’s eyes on the cigarette in his hand. He could still feel Toye’s grip on his lapel, too.

“This is my last one.”

This was the point where Toye would either go back inside, or stay.

Slowly, deliberately, Toye leaned against the brick wall and stuffed one hand in his pocket. Luz looked over and grinned at him and Toye’s lips flickered hesitantly. Ah, so he hadn’t done this before. Luz was almost touched. He took another drag from his cigarette and stubbed it out against the wall. Then he turned his back to Toye and walked around the corner. There was no door on this side, less chance they would be interrupted. For half a second he didn’t think Toye was going to follow—but then he heard the scraping of footsteps against the hard-packed earth.

He yanked Toye into a kiss as soon as the other man turned the corner. Most guys didn’t appreciate that, but he did it anyway. _This is what I get. Just this. Cheapest whore you’ll ever have_.

“What the fu—” Toye snapped, jerking back.

“Oh for Christ’s sake, you’re a paratrooper, aren’t you?” Luz said impatiently, but with enough of a smile to take the edge off. “Don’t tell me you’re too chicken for—”

Well. That was a first.

The kiss was rough to start with. Toye was pushing him hard against the wall enough to leave a bruise on the base of his skull, and he used his teeth as much as his lips—a response to Luz’s taunt more than anything. After maybe thirty seconds, though, a sigh rippled through Toye’s body, and he relaxed. His hand moved from Luz’s shoulder to the back of his neck, and he drew back enough for the kiss to turn soft. He was slow in pulling back, and pre-war Luz, that undisciplined hooligan, might have followed him forward.

“Now _that’s_ the bravery and initiative the United States Army expects of you,” he laughed breathlessly. “Uncle Sam—”

“You don’t ever shut up, huh?”

Christ, he really was attractive.

“I shut up sometimes,” Luz pouted, and then he went to his knees.

He popped open the buttons on Toye’s fly and awkwardly tugged his briefs out of the way. Expediency was the priority in situations like these. Toye wasn’t quite hard yet, but he was close enough that Luz could just get a good grip and swallow him down. Too fast—he had to draw back to keep from choking—but the initial swallow drew a harsh gasp from Toye, so he didn’t think his withdrawal was noticed. After that, it was like riding a bike.

Luz could never decide if he actually liked sucking cock or not. The first couple of times he’d tried it he’d been skittish and ultimately disappointed, and he had gratefully seized onto that as proof that he wasn’t _really_ queer, only to be hooked in again by any passing gentleman with a roguish grin and a sufficiently square jaw. He was a man of simple taste.

The fact remained that he had trouble keeping a good rhythm, and the ache in his knees and jaw always built up far too quickly, and most men needed to pay much greater attention to their personal hygiene. Yes, he was also guilty of skipping a shower every once in a while, but if he was going to have his nose shoved up against someone else’s pubic hair, he would prefer if it had been washed in the last twenty-four hours, if not sooner.

He did like the noises, though, although in this case there weren’t too many of those. Just a few soft grunts Toye made in the back of his throat and every now and again a sharp, pronounced intake of breath. Enough to make him feel smug about his hard work. George was a man who took pride in a job well done. He found it somewhat endearing, too, that Toye didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands; first he balled them into fists at his sides, then flattened them against the brick wall. Finally he rested a hesitant hand on the back of Luz’s head. His hair was too short to provide a good grip, but Toye carded his fingers through it gently. It felt nice.

“Fucking hell, Luz,” Toye muttered as George pulled back to suck hard at just the tip of his cock. It was hard to grin while giving a blowjob, but he definitely thought about it.

The alley was quiet. There was a window up above them that reverberated with the buzz of noise from the party, but more immediate were the wet suction and the moans that were coming more frequently and louder from Toye’s mouth. It was tremendously appealing, and finally Luz couldn’t take it. He pulled off and rested his forehead against Toye’s thigh, and shoved his hand in his pants. Just a few quick strokes—just to take the edge off—

“You really get off on this, huh?” Toye marveled.

“Yes,” Luz said curtly. There was a warning in his voice— _this is what I get. If you didn’t want a queer, you should’ve traded handjobs with a buddy and called it a day. But you came to me, so you don’t get to complain._

Toye was still playing with his hair. Fuck.

Too soon, Toye’s hips were shifting forward again, an impatient little sway, so Luz let go of his own cock and paid some more attention to the one bumping into his face. It was a very good-looking cock, all things considered. Not as veiny as some. Maybe a bit too thick for a blowjob, but that wasn’t a detriment in all areas.

Toye’s hips were stuttering forward, and his breath came harsher and faster; his hand cupped the back of Luz’s head again, fingers dug in tight. A rush of desire coursed through Luz, and he let his eyes drift shut as Toye let out a long, drawn-out hiss and came down his throat. That was another thing he could do without. The taste was okay, but the texture—he wasn’t a fan. He swallowed and kept swallowing, trying to get the slimy feeling out of his throat, and then reached down to start jerking off again—

And then Toye was tugging him up by his arm and manhandling him against the wall.

“What’re you—?”

“Nothin’,” Toye said, glancing over his shoulder. “Just figured this way’s better, you know, if someone comes over—you gonna take care of that or not?” he asked. He wouldn’t look directly at Luz’s dick, but he nodded in its general direction.

“Yeah,” Luz said, still confused, but he proceeded to take care of it, and decided not to point out that this was the moment when Toye was supposed to button his pants, run away, and not make eye contact for a week. Toye did clean himself up a bit, but then he just… stayed there, one shoulder against the wall, still close enough for Luz to feel his solid weight and the rough scratch of his uniform.

He had no idea why, but he appreciated it; it felt much less sordid than masturbating alone in the dark. He could cling much more easily to the noises Toye had been making, the smell of his aftershave and smoke and beer fumes, not to mention the pure erotic _energy_ of having someone there watching him…

It didn’t take long. He’d been cooped up with too many people for months, no good stimulus and no opportunity to take his time. He couldn’t help but release a steady stream of grunts and muttered curses, and his voice lifted maybe a little too loudly when he came—Toye looked nervously around. Luz fell back against the wall and gulped in deep breaths. After a few seconds he let his head loll to the side and met Toye’s gaze.

 _What the fuck are you still doing here?_ he wanted to ask, but he restrained himself. With a guy like Toye, asking wouldn’t get an answer, only defensiveness. He just raised an eyebrow questioningly and let himself enjoy the feeling of Toye’s eyes on his. He had nice eyes. Dark, even in the nighttime, steady and hard in his face. You never knew really whether Toye liked you or not—but you sure as shit knew when he disliked you. His eyes would narrow and get even colder, and there would be a sneer to his lip. But otherwise…

There was something reassuring about Toye. He knew who he was and never tried to be anything different, and that kind of certainty was appealing. At least it was to Luz. He spent half his time pretending to be other people, and that was fun, but a guy like Toye would make him weak in the knees every time.

“What are you looking at?” Toye grunted after a minute.

“You first.”

Those were the magic words; Toye cleared his throat and looked away, back at the corner they had come from.

“I, uh. Should be getting back.”

Despite himself, Luz sighed.

“Yeah, you should. All right, let’s go.”

He followed Toye around the corner, but stopped before he reached the door. Toye opened it and glanced back at him, propping the door open.

“You coming?”

“In a sec,” he said, fumbling in his pockets. “You go in, I’m just going to have another smoke.”

He didn’t miss the exasperated look Toye sent him. Luz stuck a cigarette between his lips and winked, and the door drifted shut. He settled back against the wall as he inhaled. The taste of semen was starting to fade from his mouth.

After a minute, the door opened again. This time it was Chuck—he poked his head out, saw Luz, and let the door fall shut.

“Did you just make it with the best-looking guy in the unit?” he demanded.

“Please, Chuck,” Luz simpered, blowing out smoke. “We all know that _I_ am the best-looking guy in the unit.”

“You just fucked Joe Toye,” Grant pressed.

“In a manner of speaking.”

Chuck shook his head and joined Luz against the wall, pulling a lighter out of his pocket; George passed him a cigarette.

“You lucky duck.”

“What can I say? I’m blessed.”

—

Alley was snoring in the upper berth. Tipper was in the lower berth, crowded between the swaying wall of the train car on one side and Liebgott’s body on the other.

Tip was awake. He was pretty sure Joe was, too.

He knew he should be asleep, but his heart was pounding so fiercely in his chest he felt like he was being electrified. Twitchy. And over what—being alone with Joe in the dark? They were bunkmates, for Christ’s sake, they’d done that plenty of times. Maybe not _alone_ alone. And maybe not as close as this… really, the only time they’d been in private and isolated like this was in the bivouac tent, right towards the end of their training.

God, the bivouac tent. Tipper squeezed his eyes shut. What a night that had been. It was miserable, fucking miserable. They had been cold as shit, and sore from training all day, and sleeping in tents out in the middle of nowhere. Anybody would get maudlin, under those circumstances, he consoled himself. Anybody would spill secrets they were better off keeping.

And really, Joe had started it.

“Ed? You awake?”

Speak of the devil. Tipper started.

“Yeah, Joe.”

“Where d’you think we’re going?” he asked. His voice was pitched quiet, so as not to wake Alley, and Tipper honest-to-God shivered. It was too intimate, sharing the lower berth, with Joe’s mouth just six inches from his ear.

“Dunno. Someone said New York.”

“So, what, either Germany or Africa?”

“Pretty much, I guess.”

“I bet it’ll be Germany,” Liebgott decided. “With me and Webster, they’ve got two good German translators. They’re not gonna pass that up.”

Tipper hesitated.

“You… want it to be Germany?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Liebgott replied, but his voice was a little louder, a little angrier. “Yeah, of course I do.”

Suddenly the train whistle tore through the night, and Tipper and Liebgott both jumped. Their bodies were jostled together, bones clacking with the motion of the train. The back of Tipper’s skull collided with Joe’s nose, and he whispered an apology as Joe cursed under his breath. Alley was still snoring away in the upper bunk. They settled back into position, and then suddenly Tipper rolled over and propped his head up on his arm so he could peer at Joe through the dark. He could just barely make out the plane of light on his cheek and the darker shadow beneath his brow.

“You’re really not scared of anything, huh?” he said in a hoarse voice. “If I—fuck, if I were you, I’d be scared shitless.”

“We’re both soldiers, aren’t we?” Liebgott said, shifting against the thin mattress. “We’re both going over there.”

“You know what I mean, Joe.”

“You think I should be afraid ’cuz I’m a Jew?”

“Well—yeah,” Tipper said, startled at the simmering anger beneath his words.

“I wouldn’t’ve told you if I thought you were just gonna throw it in my face,” Liebgott hissed, and he moved to turn over.

“Hey, wait.” Tipper reached out and grabbed his arm. “Hey, I wasn’t throwing anything. I only mean—everybody knows the Germans don’t like Jews. If you were captured, you’d probably be a lot worse off than the rest of us. I think I’d rather be in Africa or the Pacific, if it were me.”

“It’s _not_ you.”

“I guess that’s true.”

Tipper stared at the back of Joe’s head for a minute, wondering what he’d said, but it seemed like the other man was done talking. Tip punched his pillow and settled down with a frown. He and Joe hadn’t had the chance to talk much lately, and when they did, the conversation was often stilted. It had been like this ever since…

He hated to admit it. A cold clammy feeling coated his insides when he thought about it. Because really, it had been like this since that goddamn night in the tent.

If he thought hard about that night, he would actually start to lose feelings in his toes. Tipper was a city boy, and that night was the first he had ever spent in a tent outside—he had been shocked at how cold it got once the sun went down, even in Georgia, even wearing an extra pair of socks. The night was the darkest it had ever been, and there had been a fucking screech owl outside their tent that sounded like it was auditioning for the opera. And the worst part of it all was knowing that this was what being a soldier was actually like. They only had more of this to look forward to.

The only solace had been sharing a tent with Liebgott. There were no other men from Easy closer than ten feet away, so they had talked without worrying about being overheard. It felt like the first time in months that they had privacy, _real_ privacy, and things had gotten pretty deep. Tipper had admitted that sometimes he still thought he was going to flunk out. Joe had worried that he was going to disappoint people, that once he was in combat everything would fall apart—and that was when he told Tipper that he was Jewish, and Tipper had pretended that half the guys in camp didn’t already know.

 _I don’t talk about it much_ , Joe had said in a small voice. _Because people have this idea—I dunno. But it’s hard sometimes… there aren’t any other Jews here that I know about. I’ve never been the only one before. That’s why I get the Yiddish newspapers, you know? I feel less—alone._

And shit, but Tipper understood that too. Maybe not in the same exact way, but he could empathize with that basic, underlying need. So he had listened, and comforted best he could, and then, like a fucking idiot, he had tried to trade a story of his own. He had rambled on vaguely for a while about his pals in Detroit—at least he had enough sense not to talk about guys at Toccoa—and then somehow he found himself on the topic of Roger. He had stumbled on for a while before trailing off into silence. Joe hadn’t said anything at the time, but he had definitely gone quiet, and Tipper had the terrible idea that he _suspected_.

He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, tried to push all those worries away, but evidently Joe’s mind was running along the same lines.

“Hey, did you ever hear from that guy?” he asked suddenly, and Tipper’s heart began to pound.

“No,” he said shortly.

“That’s too bad.” He paused. “Were you and him—”

“I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Okay, Christ, fine.” He stretched his legs uncomfortably, and then suddenly rolled over and scooched closer. “Ed, I’m sorry for before, okay? I didn’t mean to get mad, it’s just—I’ve heard all the shit people say behind my back, you know? The train I took down to Toccoa, a bunch of guys were sitting around saying this is just the Jews’ war, you know, that they had started it but they weren’t going to fight in it—and I didn’t want—I don’t—I _like_ the fellas in this company. And I don’t want to hear them say that kind of shit.”

“You know I wouldn’t,” Tipper reproached.

“I know. I know. You’re a good guy.” He put his hand on Tipper’s arm and squeezed it. “But that’s why I don’t talk about this stuff. We’ve all got things we don’t want to talk about, right?”

His hand dropped to the mattress but it stayed close to Tipper’s side. Tipper looked down and swallowed past the lump in his throat.

“Yeah. I’m sorry, too,” he said to a dark pink cut on the top of Joe’s hand. “You, uh—whatever you were going to ask, you can say it.”

“All right. Uh. You and—this guy—”

“Roger.”

“Right. Were the two of you—close?”

“Yeah,” Tipper said slowly. “I guess we were.”

“I mean, were you…”

The silence was excruciating. Beneath them the train was leaping over the tracks, and each dull thud of the wheels matched the thump of Tipper’s heart. He wanted Joe to finish the question, but it seemed that he couldn’t be the one to cross that line.

“I wasn’t _in love_ with him,” Tipper blurted out, desperate, and they were close enough that he could hear Joe’s sharp intake of breath, see the way his teeth bit down on his lower lip. “We were just—it wasn’t that serious.”

“Have you ever—uh.”

“Been with—?”

“Been in love,” Joe corrected quickly. “Just—ever?”

“No. I don’t think so. Have you?”

Joe laughed a little and some of the tension left him.

“Nah. I had a girl in high school, but since then I’ve been working a lot and it’s hard to meet people, you know? My mom, she thinks my family’s becoming too American. Too goyische. She keeps setting me up with these Orthodox girls. We sit around in their parents’ living rooms for half an hour, go to dinner, and get back by seven-thirty. It’s terrible. You can’t fall in love with a girl that way. I can’t.”

Joe’s hand was still in between them, and that was what gave Tipper the boldness to say, “And what about men?”

Joe clamped his mouth shut. He shrugged one shoulder and then shook his head. He didn’t say anything, but his eyes were fixed on Ed’s, wide open and asking for something, and that was how Tipper knew it was okay to lean over and kiss him.

It was closed-mouth at first, chaste and simple; he was urging Liebgott in his mind to think _this is normal, it’s normal, it’s just like kissing girls._ But after only a minute Joe was pulling back, panting like he’d just run Currahee. He swallowed and stared at Tipper with wild eyes, white in the darkness—and then he lunged forward and kissed him again, so hard there was a dull thunk as their noses crashed into each other.

“Shit—sorry—” he mumbled, but Tipper honestly did not give a shit. He doubted if he would ever give a shit about anything except the way Joe was sucking on his lower lip and holding him steady at the base of his skull. He reached out to thread a hand through Joe’s thick, soft hair—it was such a pleasure to touch after resisting for so long.

He had no idea how long they kissed for. Time didn’t exist on that train, in the dark and the quiet. The passion ebbed and flowed; one minute they were biting and gasping, the next focused more on soft kisses and the slow trail of their hands up and down each others’ bodies. At one point Tipper pulled Joe on top of him because fuck if there was anything he loved more than a man’s weight pinning him down—that was when he realized Joe was hard, and he started to roll his hips.

“Fuck,” Liebgott hissed. “We’re gonna wake Alley.”

“So shut the fuck up, then.”

Joe bit his lip at that, but he was also shaking with laughter, and Tipper felt a smile growing on his face, the kind of smile that couldn’t be stopped, couldn’t be hidden, even if he had wanted to try. He wrapped his arms around Joe and hugged him for a minute, ignoring any other urge.

This was—this was beyond anything he had expected. He’d been desperately homesick when he got to Toccoa, terrified of being alone, missing his friends. And here he was, with new friends and a new… well. He kissed the spot below Joe’s ear and squeezed him tighter. A new something.

And to think, all it took was a war.


	2. Chapter 2

London, Luz decided, was a hell of a city.

It was the first _real_ city they’d been to, outside of a measly afternoon in New York, and he and the boys had only spent a whopping twenty minutes with the straight men in the company before Chuck became acquainted with a blonde Brit who hinted that more fun could be had elsewhere. They didn’t leave all at once, but he gave them directions and they slipped out and met up in an alley three blocks away—and then, like magic, they were giving a nonsensical password to a burly gentleman standing just inside a nondescript door, and suddenly they were in the middle of a small crowd of men, some dressed in normal clothes, others British or American service uniforms, a few daring ones in items that had almost certainly not been found in the men’s section. No one was bold enough to wear a dress, but Luz spotted someone wearing a satiny purple blouse covered in violets and couldn’t help but grin.

The man in question caught his look, grinned back, and immediately asked for a dance. Fancy that, half an hour in the city and Luz was dancing with a man! Yes, he liked London very much.

Chuck and Gene sent him onto the dance floor with a wave, and made their way to a little bar across the room. Tipper hadn’t arrived yet—he knew where to go, but he’d hedged a bit about when exactly he was going to leave, so Luz wasn’t about to wait for him. He turned his full attention to the dance. His partner had a pretty good sense of rhythm, even though the Brits’ style didn’t seem up to par, and after a song or two Luz tried to teach him how to jitterbug, to mixed results. They kept crashing into each other, which wasn’t supposed to happen, but the other man was laughing and a very attractive flush was starting to bloom on his face, so all was forgiven. Some of the other Americans in the room began to catch on, and soon the dance floor was really kicking.

He didn’t know how long it was until he started to lose steam, but after a while they began to migrate towards the edge of the dance floor, and their jitterbug had devolved into a vague kind of swaying motion.

“You want to go for a walk?” his new friend suggested in a low murmur, and Luz felt that little tingle of pleasure that always slid down his spine when someone made an offer like that. He didn’t feel inclined to take him up on it—not yet, at least—but the ego boost was nice.

“Thanks, but I think I’ll stick with my friends here.” He jerked his head at the table where Gene and Chuck were sitting with glasses in their hands. “As a matter of fact, a drink sounds pretty damn good right about now.”

“I could use a buvere myself, now that you mention it,” the Brit said cheerily, and he wove his arm through George’s and dragged him off the dance floor to a large rectangular table that served as a makeshift bar.

“A _what_?” Luz laughed.

“A buvere. A drink, darling. All right, Lionel?” he said to the bartender.

“Everything’s bona here. How about you?”

“Spiffy. You’ve got lime juice, don’t you?”

“It’s out of a bottle.”

“That’ll do. Two gimlets, please. We haven’t been able to get much fresh fruit the last few years,” he said offhandedly to Luz as the bartender started to mix the drinks. “Rationing, you know. We make do.”

“Here, Reg,” the bartender said, pushing the drinks their way.

“Cheers.” They clinked their glasses and Luz took a small sip from his. It was sour as hell, but he had always had a fondness for gin, so it was good enough. Reg knocked back half of his in one go, and his eyes fell on Chuck and Gene’s table. “Why don’t you introduce me to your friends?”

“ _Shameless_ ,” Luz tutted.

“I gave you first shot, didn’t I?” Reg grinned.

“Got a point there.” Luz drained the rest of his drink—it’d been a long time since he had the opportunity to get soused, and he wasn’t going to let it pass him by—and the bartender poured him another. “Lead the way, my friend. And if you want my two cents’ worth, I think you’ll have an easier time with the one on the left. Other one, I think he’s rationed.”

“Not a problem,” he said. His eyes glittered when he looked at Chuck, and sure enough, within about fifteen seconds of approaching the table, he had whisked the estimable sergeant out onto the dance floor. Luz snorted and fell into Chuck’s abandoned chair.

“These limeys aren’t half bad,” he announced as he pushed his hair out of his face. “Come on, doc, why aren’t you dancing?”

“I can’t understand a word they sayin’,” Gene said in a cross, loud voice. His cheeks were a little flushed—alcohol, not exertion.

“The accent?”

“Not just the accent, it’s the words too. A fellow just now asked me if I was looking to _blag_ somebody, and said something about a corybunga, whatever the hell that means. ’S funny that they’re from England and they can’t even speak good English.”

“Aw, come on, Gene, it’s just slang,” Luz laughed. “I’m starting to pick it up. I think ‘bona’ means ‘good’ and ‘buvere’ means ‘drink.’ As in ‘this is a bona buvere.’”

He gulped his gimlet, and Roe shook his head.

“Okay, Luz. I think I’ll stick with Cajun French and normal English.”

“Suit yourself.” He leaned against the table, peering through the crowd. The room was dark—probably a precaution, he thought, to protect people’s privacy. He could still see the bar clearly, though, and if he squinted at the dance floor he could make out the cut of Chuck’s uniform as he swayed with their British pal. “Still think you should dance, though. Looks like Chuck’s having fun.”

As the words left his mouth, Reg went up on his tiptoes and pressed his mouth to Grant’s. Chuck started in surprise, but he didn’t seem to mind much; he pressed his hand flat against the small of the other man’s back and bent his head down.

“Mmhm, lots of fun,” Roe drawled. He took a sip from his drink and let his gaze drop to the table. “I don’t know. I’m not a big dancer, and I ain’t looking for that kind of fun tonight. Wouldn’t want to lead anybody on.”

“Your man’s really got you on that tight a leash?” Luz said, eyebrows lifting. “Gene, we’re going to be breezing through London, Paris, Berlin—your big European tour and you’re gonna spend the whole thing solo?”

“It just don’t seem fair,” Roe shrugged. “Shelton’s off on a desert island somewhere. It’s not like—” He paused, and the blush on his cheeks spread down to his neck. “Well, we weren’t really going steady for the whole time we knew each other. But it was _fair_ , back then, each of us stepping out when we felt like it, and this feels different.”

“Eugene, you dirty dog. I never would have guessed.”

“It’s not like this back home,” Gene said defensively. “There’s no place to _go_ . You mostly just—well, people talk about parts of town, you know, and eventually you work up the nerve to go to that neighborhood, and somebody looks at you a certain way and you go home with them. Or—or you don’t.” He cleared his throat. “Maybe you become friends after, but it’s always _after_. I don’t know, like I said, I don’t have a whole lot of gay friends, just Shelton and one or two of his buddies.”

“Huh.” Luz sipped his drink. “That’s one way of going about it, I guess.”

“What, you used to something different?”

“Yeah.” He grinned. “Almost the exact opposite. See, my town’s not that big. If you were hanging around a certain neighborhood all the time, you bet your ass somebody would notice. But there’s this one old queen who’s got this big house on one of the _nice_ streets, and he likes to throw parties for all the young people. ’Cause why not, you know? He’s a bachelor, he’s got plenty of space. And what happens is, everybody goes, and there’s tea and punch and polite conversation and big band music on the record player—no close dancing, though, and no race records, to keep things proper—and then folks who are wise just sidle up to him and drop a couple hints. A few weeks later, they get invited to another party, except this one’s full of guys batting their eyelashes at each other and dames smoking pipes.”

Gene’s eyebrows had been slowly climbing up, and now he pursed his lips skeptically.

“I think I like my way better. Don’t know if I’d even make it in the door at that kind of party.”

“It’s not _that_ bad. Old Allen doesn’t mind if your suit’s a little shabby as long as you flirt with him for a couple minutes when you get there. And if you miss your street corners, the house has plenty of closets.” He winked. “It’s just you can’t let Al know, because he gets worried people will pair off then break up and start a whole thing. Best to let him know a year later if the relationship’s still steady.”

Luz drained the last of his drink and lit a cigarette. He offered one to Gene, who accepted and leaned forward so he could light it.

“You don’t have anyone at home, do you?” Gene asked in a muffled voice.

“Me, nah. Like I said, it’s a small town. They’re not huge parties. One of my buddies knows about a salon in Providence, though, and we were talking about heading up but then he got drafted. Plans postponed.”

Roe nodded absently, and then a sly expression crept over his face.

“Too bad your someone in the Army couldn’t come out tonight,” he said, and Luz let out a bark of laughter.

“You’re telling me. But you know how it is.” He shrugged. Truth was, he wasn’t entirely sure how it was himself; Toye had approached him again the first week they arrived in Aldbourne, when Sobel had canceled all passes, but lately he’d been avoiding Luz entirely. It was starting to get on his nerves. But he was having a good night, and he didn’t feel the need to unburden himself on Gene. “Speaking of which,” he said suddenly. “You heard Tip finally made it with Liebgott, right?”

The look Roe sent him was almost pitying.

“Luz, that happened damn near six weeks ago.”

“Hey, we were crammed in that troop ship like sardines, and since we got here they've been running us ragged. It’s not like we’ve had much free time for chatting. But still, that’s nice and sappy, isn’t it? I’m happy for the lovebirds.”

“I suppose.” Roe paused and sucked in a lungful of smoke. “You know, Tipper meant to be here,” he said as he exhaled. “He was trying to get Liebgott to come, too.”

“That explains it. Bet you a week’s pay they found a hotel room instead,” Luz declared. He stubbed out his cigarette in the bottom of his glass, clapped his hands against his thighs, and stood. “All right, enough of this. You’ve had a drink, you’ve had a smoke. Time for a dance, doc.”

Roe hesitated.

“I don’t know, Luz.” He grinned and discarded his cigarette. “I was watching you, before. You’re a real dead hoofer.”

“Oh, you think you can do better?”

Gene stood and took his hand, and tugged Luz towards the dance floor.

“I’m from New Orleans, boo. I can jitterbug circles around you.”

—

“That’s it for now, boys,” Lipton said, rolling up the map. “We’ll keep you updated when we know more. Dismissed.”

He nodded at them and slipped out of the tent, and the other sergeants began to gather up their things. Half of them still had paint on their faces; Chuck thought they looked like a bunch of gloomy frogs in the dim light.

“Can you believe this?” Martin grumbled. “All day we’ve been running around like crazy getting ready for this jump, and tomorrow we’ll have to do it all over again.”

“Hey, look on the bright side, Johnny,” Guarnere grinned as he stood and shrugged into his jacket. “Maybe we’ll get ice cream twice.”

They exited the tent together, but then they split up. A few guys wanted to go see _Mr. Lucky_ ; others had already seen it half a dozen times and were opting for the barracks. Chuck found his steps slowing, and when the guys looked back he simply waved them off. It was a nice afternoon—cool, not at all muggy. It felt good to take a minute to enjoy the fresh air. England didn’t get really hot, not as bad as Georgia, but it was still summer, and lately they’d spent a lot of time huddled together in close rooms breathing in everyone else’s cigarette smoke.

He was just about to pass a gap in the tent when he paused. He could hear voices—they were quiet, and he couldn’t recognize them at first, but something in the tone made him feel like he shouldn’t interrupt. Probably he should have turned around and walked away, but… well, it wasn’t really eavesdropping, was it? In a public place like this, there couldn’t be any expectation of privacy.

“Are you okay?” Chuck couldn’t hear any reply, but the first voice responded “You don’t _look_ fine.”

This time he head a faint voice, but the only word he could make out was “waiting.”

“Yeah?” Was that Liebgott? “Bet we can make the time pass.”

There was a suggestive note in the voice, and there was no mistaking the sounds that came after—alarm jolted up Chuck’s spine and he glanced around anxiously. Once he confirmed there was no one else around, the anxiety was replaced by indignation. What were they _thinking_? In public, where anyone could walk by? It wasn’t even nighttime yet; it was still light out and half the men stationed on base were still milling around. This was a hell of a time to be kissing another man.

Evidently the other person had the same thought, because he pushed Joe strong enough for Chuck to hear the rustling of his uniform.

“Come on, no one’s looking—”

“Sure, _now_ you don’t have any problem kissing me. You’ve got a funny sense of timing, Joe.”

The voice was stronger now, and peevish, and Chuck had no difficulty identifying it as Tipper’s. Chuck’s immediate thought was that he wanted to round a corner and give them both a good tongue-lashing, but he restrained himself. Tipper sounded upset, and maybe it was better to give them a minute or two to make up before intervening. The airfield was packed with servicemen; there probably _was_ no private place for them to talk. He scanned the area again and held his place.

“Tip, I told you—”

“Yeah, I know.”

“It’s not my scene.”

“How do you know if you’ve never tried it? You promised me a dance, Liebgott. And the other guys had a lot of fun that we missed out on. Twice.”

“I know, I owe you.”

“That doesn’t count,” Tipper said after a pause, although he sounded somewhat mollified.

“I’ll make it up to you. I will.”

“Yeah,” Tipper said dully, and Chuck figured that was his cue.

“You boys have any idea how stupid you are?” he asked casually as he strolled around the corner of the tent. They both jumped, and Liebgott blanched as his arms fell to his sides. “Anyone could have heard you. Every NCO in the company passed by over there not two minutes ago.”

“We—uh—” Liebgott’s eyes flickered between Tipper and Chuck. He reached out and squeezed Tipper’s hand, and then dropped it and walked quickly past Chuck. “Sorry,” he muttered as he passed. Tipper watched him go, frowning but resigned.

“Thanks, Chuck.”

“It’s the truth. People still get kicked out of the Army for this, you know. Even in wartime. And if you get a discharge, it follows you around—people want to know why. I know it’s nice, having friends and a guy and everything, but you’ve still got to be _careful_ , Tip.”

There was an undercurrent of anger in his voice. He could hear it, but there was nothing he could do to change his tone. Back home, he’d known at least four guys who ended up in jail because they had gotten too confident, too careless. Chuck hadn’t exactly been timid himself—he still went cruising, just like everybody else—but at the same time he couldn’t stop himself from worrying over Luz and Tipper, who seemed just a little _too_ delighted to be open about being gay. Gene came from the same kind of place as Chuck. Gene was careful. And at least Luz had his uncanny knowledge of people. He knew how to be safe and could probably talk his way out of anything, besides.

Tipper… Tipper was different. He was just a year younger than the rest of them, but they all felt they had to protect him, and sometimes he really seemed like he needed protecting.

“I know,” he mumbled. “Yeah, Chuck, I’m sorry. Won’t happen again.”

There were lines of dark grime streaked down Tipper’s face, but the spaces in between them were parachute-white.

“Hey,” Chuck said. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Oh yeah, I’m fine. It’s just Joe doesn’t really want anyone else to know he’s gay. I tried to get him to come dancing with you guys in London, and he _said_ he would join us in that pub last weekend. But you know, it’s a process.” He shrugged. “I’ll get over it.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he said slowly. “Is there anything else?”

Tipper chewed on his lip for a minute before answering.

“Is the jump going to be tomorrow, you think?” he blurted out.

That wasn’t what Chuck was expecting, but he nodded.

“The Channel looks like it’s clearing already in parts, they say, but it’s too late to set out now. It’s looking like the jump will be tomorrow night.”

Tipper swallowed, and nodded slowly. His gaze had drifted down to the gravel path at their feet.

“I wish it was tonight,” he admitted. “It was one thing waiting before, but waiting now…” He sighed. “It’s not going to be anything like training, is it?”

The last bit of anger faded, leaving Chuck feeling nothing but tired. He stepped closer and put an arm around Tipper’s shoulders.

“Don’t worry about it, Ed,” he said, trying to inject his voice with the kind of authority that Lieutenant Winters had mastered about his second day at Toccoa. “It’s not a private’s job to worry. All you have to do is listen to your NCOs, and you’ll get through okay.”

Paratroop infantry was a brand-new concept. The NCOs had no more experience than Tipper did, just a few more classes and two extra chevrons on their sleeves, but a half-smile emerged on Tipper’s face.

“You got it, sarge.”

“And listen, when you’ve taken your objective, try and hook up with Gene, okay? He’s going to be moving through the platoons more than the rest of us, so he’s going to try and check in with us and Luz, make sure everything’s—worked out all right.”

He fumbled over the last few words, but Tipper didn’t say anything about it.

“Yeah, okay.”

“And—don’t worry about Liebgott, either. He’ll come around.”

“Sure he will,” Tipper grinned. “He always does.”

“Get out of here,” Chuck snorted. He patted Tipper on the back, and the private headed off towards the movie tent.

Chuck remained where he was. He ought to go back into the training hall and look over the route again. Instead he looked up at the sky. It was still dark with fog, but every now and again holes had been gouged in the velvet to reveal pale blue sky, even a few faint rays of sun. It looked peaceful. It was hard to believe they were going to be flying through that in less than twenty-four hours. They were going to be _falling_ through that. And if their intelligence about German ack-ack guns was good, that blue was going to be shredded by shells, bursts of yellow and white fire.

Chuck shivered. It wouldn’t do any good thinking of that. He was an NCO. It was his men’s job to listen to him, and it was his job to listen to his officers, and to be a calm voice of reason for them both. That was all.

He watched for another minute and wondered if the wind was picking away at the edge of the fog, or if it was his eyes playing tricks on him. Then he went back inside.

—

The jump was wrong.

He could feel it in his bones, the jump was wrong, he was being buffeted on every side, the natural cold wind of the nighttime and the unnatural percussive heat of explosions. The plane had been too fast, too low, and Gene felt like he was hurtling towards the ground at a dangerous speed, and above him the parachute was fighting, struggling, wrestling with the wind, pulling him up, up, up.

The pills had started to wear off but some of their effect remained, a parasite of confusion in his mind, and suddenly he was thinking of the day he learned to swim.

He had never learned to swim. He had only learned how not to drown.

It had been just like this, the push down, the pull up, and his head so mixed up he hardly knew which way he was supposed to go. But that day, at the end of it, when he had crawled out of the water with weeds clinging to his limbs and brackish tears coating his face, his parents had been there, his mother crooning at him in bastard French, his father patting his back with a wide, calloused hand. They had put him to bed and he had slept for the rest of the day, warm and safe in his parents’ room.

Now he hit the ground and rolled and ran. He was in an open field—he wasn’t supposed to be in a field, he was supposed to be under cover in the woods. Gene ran as fast as his legs could carry him and ducked under a tall-growing bush. His heart was pounding, but he closed his eyes and breathed in, all of his senses alert to his surroundings.

Okay. Okay, this was familiar. After all that training at Aldbourne, at Toccoa, in the bayou back home, he knew what to do in the woods. He listened for the sound of other people and could tell that none were close by. In the distance he could hear men running, shooting, shouting, but the immediate area was preternaturally still. They’d told him about this. About how birds and woodland critters fled battlefields, or at least curled themselves up in their holes and waited for it to be safe. But to be in the middle of the silence was more unnerving than he had anticipated.

“Flash?” he hissed, hoping for a response, but the only thing he could hear was his own pounding heartbeat.

For a moment Gene was paralyzed by the awareness that he was all alone in the woods, in the middle of enemy territory, and that he had nothing with which to defend himself except a two-inch pair of scissors. No rifle, no bayonet, no brass knuckles. Not even a pen knife. He had carried a pen knife in his pocket since he was seven years old. At first he had used it to slice wild persimmons on the way to school, peel open crawdads, and carve his initials into any tree that caught his fancy. Then they had moved to New Orleans, and he had learned to use it for real.

Now he had no weapon, just a strip of cloth on his arm that was meant to protect him. Dark night like this, would the Germans even see the red cross? Would they care?

No time to think about that, he told himself sternly. He had a job to do. He didn’t know where the hell he was, but his job was the same. Find Americans, latch on to ’em, treat ’em if they were wounded, stay alive. Okay.

Gene moved through the brush as quickly as he dared, keeping low and peering through the darkness. He wasn’t sure if he was heading in the right direction at all, but the woods to the southwest seemed a mite bit thinner, and he was hoping there would be a road with a signpost somewhere nearby. Meanwhile he kept his ears peeled. First platoon couldn’t be so spread out, could it? Some of them had to be close.

He had moved maybe half a mile before he heard footsteps. For a second he had the urge to shout with relief, but then he bit his lip and ducked behind a nearby tree, heart pounding.

“Flash?” he breathed, so quiet that no one who wasn’t expecting it could discern an actual word. At least, that was the idea.

“You hear something?” a voice murmured, and Gene’s knees went weak. He would give a month’s pay if there was a kraut out there who could do a Mississippi accent that well.

“Flash?” he repeated, louder this time, and the “Thunder” reply came quick. Gene poked his head out behind the tree and saw a big, burly dark-haired private emerging from the ferns ahead of him.

“We’ve been looking for—hey, are you a medic?”

“Yeah,” Gene said, standing straighter. This might be the moment. “Why, you wounded?”

“Not me, my buddy. Nobody else from our stick landed anywhere close, and I didn’t want to move him too much on my own.”

“What happened to him?”

The private turned and began to walk back to a more heavily-covered area, and Gene followed to find a paratrooper propped up against a tree, clutching his rifle for dear life. One leg was stretched out in front of him.

“Got hit with some shrapnel when we were coming down. Then he landed wrong and we think…”

He gestured vaguely at the other fellow’s ankle, which was bent at an odd angle. Gene knelt down and reached for his med kit.

“Yep, it’s broken,” he said, and internally he marveled at how calm his own voice sounded. “Is this the only place you’ve been cut?” he asked, indicating a spot where the two had clumsily wrapped bandages from their aid kits around the man’s calf.

And just like that… Gene was delivering first aid. He couldn’t believe it. His fear had just faded to a faint hum in the background, and his own voice was coming in fuzzy. All his focus had narrowed in on his hands, which moved with effortless grace.

Well—not all his focus. Because there, in one little corner of his mind, he could hear his grandmother’s voice. Clear as day, he heard her sneering “ _fou_!” on the day a man had come in from work with an arm broken so bad the bone was sticking out, and Gene had taken one look and recoiled.

_“Quel kinda traiteur you gon’ be, hein?” she chided him as she cleaned the wound with hydrogen peroxide and a drop of holy water, effortlessly set the bone with a splint and a Hail Mary. “Getting the mal au coeur from a little bone and blood. What good you gon’ do?”_

_“Ain’t gonna be a traiteur, mawmaw,” he’d replied, a sullen teenager who resented being lectured by a crotchety old woman who spoke only to pray or criticize._

_“Il est un fou,” she’d said to her patient as though Gene weren’t there at all. “I know he my petit fils, mais he’s blind. And deaf, too. You don’t gotta listen to me, boy,” she snapped when he rolled his eyes. “But le bon Dieu, you better listen when He calls.”_

He had scoffed, but then God had called him in the voice of Colonel Sink, looking for any infantryman who’d ever so much as touched a First Aid kit. Now here he was, setting bones and picking metal splinters out of flesh, and doing his best to keep his face straight just so the men wouldn’t realize how inexperienced he was. Somewhere, his mawmaw was laughing.

Eventually he set the wounded man to rights, and Gene and the other paratrooper carried him only a few stumbling yards before they ran across a mostly-intact platoon from Dog Company. After that, everything seemed to happen right after each other, like scenes in a movie that had just been waiting for their cue. First Gene was treating a man who’d gotten a nasty bayonet wound from a jumpy private in the dark, and then twenty minutes later the platoon stumbled across three Germans on patrol and their lieutenant was shot in the shoulder. It could have been worse, but telling himself that didn’t keep Gene’s stomach from churning.

Over the next few hours they stumbled over more groups of Americans with minor injuries, to the point where Gene started demanding the supplies from their aid kits, just to try and make things last. He was shocked that they actually obeyed these orders without question—even the officers—but he tried not to let it show.

Around dawn they stumbled into St. Mare-Eglise, which meant that Gene was hurled right into an enormous church turned aid station packed to the gills with wounded men and frantic medics. It was there that he had his first patient die under his hands. He froze, still pressing an enormous pad of gauze to the artery on the corporal’s leg, and the surgeon who had been directing him stood up straight, sighed, “damn it,” and shook his head.

That was it.

Thirty seconds later he was at another bedside, picking out bullets with his forceps.

“Hey, doc,” a voice said, and he looked up to find Frank Perconte standing before him, supporting a man he didn’t recognize.

“Perconte,” he said in a voice heavy with relief. “Easy’s here, then?”

“Bits of it,” Frank shrugged. “This is Gardner, he’s from Baker. He got a little too close to a grenade. Listen, I gotta get back to Lieutenant Welsh—good to see you, doc,” he said as Gene opened his mouth to ask a question, and just like that he was gone.

For the next twenty minutes Gene was distracted, and more than once another medic was sharp with him, but he couldn’t help it. All the air left his body in a sigh of relief the second he saw Chuck Grant poke his head into church door. He mumbled an excuse to the nearest medic and slipped out.

“How’re you doing?” he said immediately. “Is that—”

“It’s nothing,” Chuck said, shrugging away the thin layer of blood that had matted the hair on the right side of his face. “Head wounds, you know how they are. It happened hours ago. No, I only came because I figured this was where you’d be if you were in St Mare. You seen anybody?”

“No, just Perconte. He said the whole company ain’t here yet.”

“Nobody’s seen Lieutenant Meehan’s platoon at all,” Chuck said darkly. “But all the other officers are here, it’s just some of the enlisted missing. Liebgott said he’d seen Luz with Welsh,” he said, forestalling Gene’s next question.

“But you haven’t seen him yourself?” Gene confirmed. “Or Tipper?” Chuck shook his head, and Gene took a deep breath. “Okay. I’m gonna do rounds. Ed was with Lieutenant Compton, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Right.” His mind was nothing but static, and he turned to go, but then he paused. “Oh, and Chuck…” He hesitated, and then stretched up to give the taller man a quick, tight one-armed hug. They had just landed in enemy territory and survived. No one was going to notice. “Thanks for coming to find me,” he mumbled.

“You got it, Gene,” Chuck said in a low voice. “Do me a favor, let me know when you find everybody, huh?”

“’Course.”

Roaming through St. Mare-Eglise was worse than the woods. At least eight times Gene thought he caught a glimpse of somebody who might be Luz or Tipper, and his heart seized up with worry when he realized he was wrong. Then he heard a voice raised in a brash imitation of Colonel Sink, and his feet turned him the right way before he even knew where he was going. Luz was sitting on a fountain’s edge in the middle of a knot of Easy Company boys, grinning like he didn’t have a care in the world. He wasn’t bleeding and he still had all his limbs. Hell, he still had his rifle, which was better than most of them were doing.

A chorus of “hey doc”s met him as he approached, and as Luz looked up, Gene saw his shoulders lower in a moment of relief.

“Everything all right with you boys?” Gene asked, and got various answers, some affirmations and some over-the-top complaints. Curses were rained down on the damnfool pilots who couldn’t get a drop zone right. Gene listened and smiled, but he kept one eye on Luz.

“Forget these idiots, they’re fine,” he said. “We’re all fine. You been around to all the platoons, doc?”

“Not all of them yet. I just spoke to Sergeant Grant and they’re all doing alright. I hear Lieutenant Meehan’s platoon hasn’t showed up yet. What about Compton’s, anybody know?”

“Yeah, I saw Compton,” Luz nodded. “Tipper, Malarkey, Muck and Penkala, all those guys.”

“Good,” Gene muttered, and Luz’s lips twitched in a tiny grin.

“Winters is here, too,” Alley added. “He’s got Toye and Guarnere and a bunch of people.”

“Okay, well I’ll go around and check on ’em myself. Hey, if anybody needs a medic and you can’t find me, they’ve got an aid station set up in the church, all right? Hang tough.”

And then he was off again, determined to see Tipper with his own two eyes, but no longer as nervous as he had been. He found Compton’s small, ragged platoon sprawled outside of a building along with some of the men who had arrived with Lieutenant Winters. The officers and NCOs were inside, getting briefed on a new objective, but the enlisted men were just sitting around having a breather. A few greeted him, and Tipper looked up with a tentative smile.

Mutely, Gene walked over to him and let his legs collapse. He slumped against the wall and let his eyes fall shut. God, he was tired. He was tired and shaky and—and homesick. It was an unexpected emotion, and he was startled to identify it. He’d been a little homesick when he first arrived at Toccoa, but that was damn near two years ago. Since then, nothing. Something about this day that kept bringing up old memories, and they were weighing on him heavy.

Maybe it was as simple as having people he loved around, and worrying about them. There was always something to worry about back home. His father had died when he was young, so after that he’d worried about his mama—about her working, her health, her keeping the house. Mawmaw, too. Then they’d died within eight months of each other, and he’d settled for worrying over his friends at work, his young across-the-hall neighbor and her housebound father, and Shelton. Lord, always Shelton.

“Did you find the other guys?” Tipper asked out of the corner of his mouth. They were sitting so close their legs were pressed together, and Tipper nudged him with his knee affectionately.

“Yeah, I did. You were the last one.”

“I meant to go find you. Sorry about that.” Then Gene felt eyes on his face, and he opened his eyes to see Tipper frowning at him. “Hey Gene, you okay?”

_“Hey Gene, you okay?”_

_“’M fine,” he sniffed. There was a cut above his eye that was still bleeding, and he blinked fiercely and tried not to cry. Shelton would never let him live it down if he cried._

_“God damn you, Roe.” He heard footsteps, and Shelton’s boots appeared in his view. Then Shelton knelt and took Gene’s chin in his hand, forcing him to look up. He shook his head, lips pressed tight together, and took a kerchief out of his pocket. He scrunched it up and pressed it against the cut on his forehead. “Didn’t I tell you not to go home with him? Huh?”_

_“I thought—” It was embarrassing to admit it. Gene shrugged, and then the movement made him wince. God, he must have a bruised rib. Hurt too bad to be anything else. “Thought you were just jealous.”_

_Shelton shook his head again, but whether it was in response to Gene’s words or just in general disapproval, he couldn’t tell. The other boy stood and went to get the first aid kit from the cabinet under the kitchen sink. Of course he knew where it was. He’d had cause to fetch it often enough, although usually Shelton was the busted-up one. He knelt on the floor again and started to fix gauze and tape to the cuts on Gene’s face._

_“That sonovabitch—he hates himself and everybody else. He’s a mean bastard. I’ve told you a million times, you’ve got to stay away from the mean ones.”_

_“Yeah,” he said. His voice sounded hoarse to his own ears. He swallowed and cleared his throat, and then Shelton’s hand stilled against his cheek. Gene looked up. Shelton’s eyes were flickering over his face and his lips were parted like he was going to say something._

_Instead he bowed his head and touched his mouth to Gene’s. It hurt—he had a split lip—but Gene wasn’t the one to pull away._

_“You stick with me, huh, Gene?” Shelton said. His voice sounded hoarse, too. “I’ll look after you.”_

_“I ain’t the one needs looking after,” Gene said resolutely, because bruises or no, that was definitely the wrong way around. Shelton chuckled._

_“Shit, boo, you looked in the mirror lately?”_

The memory made him smile, and Tipper flashed a hesitant, encouraging grin in response.

“Yeah,” Gene managed. He took a deep breath and sat up straighter, squaring his shoulders. “Yeah, I’m all right.”

It wasn’t entirely true. But soon enough it would be.

—

There was a routine to it. Being a medic. Being in combat. It was all about suppressing his old instincts and developing new ones. Gene learned how to run _into_ explosions, how to stay still when every nerve in his body was telling him to move, how to keep his hands steady even when adrenaline was making him vibrate. He had learned the mechanics of treating wounded men, and now he learned the rhythm of it. Scan for injuries, deliver drugs, pin syrette, tear sulfa powder, wrap bandage, snip it off, scribble something for the next doc, send the man on his way. Over and over again, the steady beat of a pounding drum, the rhythm of a heartbeat.

Then.

Then it was his turn to man the makeshift aid station just outside the battle lines, in the outbuildings of a French town nobody had ever heard of, and Gene turned away from a corporal with a minor graze on his arm to find Liebgott and Welsh supporting a man between them. Blood was caked on his face and splattered across his uniform, but Gene recognized his silhouette, and his heart stopped.

“My God,” he gasped. “Get me—stretcher—”

A private scurried up with a stretcher taken from the back of the officers’ jeep, and Liebgott and Welsh lowered Tipper onto it. He whimpered as his legs buckled; they were both broken, Gene realized, and he bit his lip to keep his horror from reaching his face.

“It’s Tipper,” Liebgott said in an unusually calm voice, although there was a nervous tic in his cheek. “He got hit—it was a mortar—we’ve got to get him to a surgeon—”

“Not yet,” Gene said. His own voice sounded like it was coming from very far away as his eyes trailed over Tipper’s body. “First I’ve got to stop some of the bleeding, brace his legs. You two, go back down that way, I need four straight sticks, fence posts, branches, whatever you can get, about three feet long. _Now_ ,” he snapped when Liebgott and Welsh hesitated.

Then he turned his full attention to Tipper. He bent down over him and touched one hand to the side of the man’s face. His hair was sticky with blood, and his eye—God, there was no treating that, it would have to be removed. For the first time since D-Day, Gene’s stomach turned over.

“Hey, Ed,” he said in a soft voice. Tipper’s other eye fluttered open, though it took him a minute to focus. “Looks like you made a real mess of things.”

“Guess I don’t look too good, huh?” Tipper said, but his voice was distorted—hoarse, wobbly, awkward around his fat lip. Gene swallowed.

“Always thinking about your looks,” he admonished. “I’m gonna give you some morphine, alright? Might take a minute to kick in, but it’ll help with the pain.”

Gene was nervous about messing with Tip’s legs too much—that kind of injury, no telling how much muscle damage there was along with the broken bones—so although his trousers were already torn to shreds, he yanked up his shirt instead and plunged the syrette into the meat of his abdomen. Tipper grunted, and Gene quietly directed him to close his eyes so he could dress the wound. Then he looked around helplessly for something else to do. He had far too many options—Tip looked like the entire German army had piled on him.

“I’m sorry I let you guys down, Gene.”

Gene started.

“Boy, what kind of nonsense are you talking now?”

“We’re all—” Tipper sniffed. Tears were coming out of his good eye, leaving clean streaks in the blood on his face, but whether they were from pain or emotion, Gene couldn’t tell. “We’re all supposed t’be helping each other and I’m—I’m jus’ leaving you here—”

“Edward, I don’t want to hear another word out of you,” Gene interrupted. There was an undercurrent of anger in his voice to keep the distress at bay, and Tipper shut his mouth right quick. Gene tended to his foot as he talked, sprinkling it with sulfa powder and wrapping it up nice and not thinking about how the surgeon was probably going to cut it off. “You ain’t gonna think about that again, you understand? I’m fixing you up best I can, and in a minute the morphine’s gonna kick in and you’re gonna sleep. Then you’re gonna go home and heal up, rest up, buy some goddamn war bonds to keep me stocked in bandages, and write us letters about all those pretty boys you meet in Detroit. You hear?”

A corner of Tipper’s mouth twitched.

“I got it,” he croaked.

“Good.”

He had all the main wounds bandaged now—there was more he could do, but where the hell were those guys with the braces for his legs? He straightened up and looked around. Liebgott and Welsh were in the distance, debris in their arms, and he waved his arm to urge them to move quicker, just as he felt a tug somewhere around his ankle.

“Gene, could you tell ’em I said goodbye?” Tipper mumbled. “And hang tough, and I love ’em.”

“Yeah, Tip, I’ll tell ’em.”

“Luz ’n Chuck ’n Joe?”

“Every last one of them.” He knelt down beside the stretcher. “Listen, Ed, this would be a good time for you to pass out now, if you can. I’ve got to set the bones in your legs, and it’s gonna hurt like hell, even with the morphine. You just remember what I said, okay? You heal, you rest, you don’t worry about us. Okay?”

“Okay,” Tipper managed, and then he waved his hand in a vaguely affectionate gesture and his eyes drifted shut.

Gene reached down and smoothed a hand over Tipper’s hair again. There was a lump in his throat, and he took a second to admit that he was shaken. He’d been treating wounded men for—well, two weeks in combat now, not counting all the mishaps they’d brought to him stateside. He’d seen folks with injuries this bad. Worse. He’d felt men die under his hands. But none of them… God, none of them were _Tipper_.

He winced as he set the bones in his legs, and tried not to think of Ed dancing in the moonlight in Georgia, or the way he’d paced nervously right up until it came time to jump. Tried not to think about the leaping light in his eyes whenever he got to flirting, or the steadier delighted gleam when he caught Gene in a private corner on the troopship and said he’d had a moment alone with Liebgott.

None of that mattered, he told himself—and, later, told Luz and then Chuck, when they approached him with pale faces and demanded to know if Tipper had really gotten hit. None of that mattered, because he was alive.

“Still, though,” Luz murmured. “If he had taken one more step…”

“Yeah,” Gene acknowledged quietly.

There was another way of looking at it, too, although neither of them pointed it out. Tipper had survived. The next man....


	3. Chapter 3

_It’s a pain not knowing how much the censor will take out—if you catch an officer on a grumpy day he’ll just throw out the whole letter sometimes—but I think I can tell you that my unit is staying put for a while and everybody’s hoping we’ll actually have a decent Christmas. We could all use it. A lot of fellas have been sent home already, and even our replacements know what they’re doing now. I hope that—_

The door of the barracks opened and Luz looked up from his letter to see the back of someone’s head. He was puzzled for a second, but then he was distracted by the fact that he recognized that particular head, and that they were alone in the room. Everyone else was either gambling, watching the movie in the rec room, or practicing for the football game.  His heart gave a funny leap and he scrambled up off his bed. It had been a long six months; this would be his Christmas present to himself.

“Hey, Toye!” he called.

Toye’s shoulders slumped, but he turned back around and jerked his head in a greeting.

“Hey.”

“Where you been, huh? You know if I were a sensitive man I’d say you were avoiding me,” Luz said with a grin, leaning against the nearest bunk. Toye didn’t take the bait.

“What do you want, Luz?” he said with more weariness than the situation called for, in George’s opinion.

“What do I want?” he parroted. “Jesus, didn’t know I was that demanding, sheesh. I just wanted to talk to you for a minute is all.”

“Okay.” Toye folded his arms. “Talk.”

Luz was not one prone to being at a loss for words, but he was left scrambling under Toye’s scrutinous gaze. He was unsettled, and part of him considered just backing off, turning the discussion to the weather or the football game or anything else. But fortune favored the bold, so he donned a winning smile and offered, “Want a blowjob?”

“That's all you’ve got to say?”

“That’s the general gist of it, yeah,” Luz said, even though something hot and unpleasant was trickling down his spine, and fuck, his stomach was in _knots_.

He should have fucked Reg in London, he realized belatedly. Should’ve said yes to a few more guys behind the head. As is, Toye was the only man he’d been close to in months, and he had let himself get fixated without even realizing it. Rookie mistake, and one that rarely paid off.

“Fuck,” Toye sighed. He looked down at the ground and ran a hand over the back of his bristly hair. “Honestly, Luz, I thought you could take a hint better than this.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked, feigning ignorance to try and save his pride.

“I’m talking about—” He flung his hand in Luz’s general direction. “All this. You know. I’m not—that way. It’s cool, brother, I’m not going to fuck you over, but it was just a one-time thing, all right?”

Luz couldn’t keep his smile from fading, but he did his best to keep a composed expression at least. He had pushed too hard. Back home he had known better; you never tried to move on a guy at his first salon. It was just asking for trouble. Maybe he had been counting on the scarcity of women, outside of the occasional Paris trip, to help Toye along.

But hey, he could be patient. He didn’t even point out that, technically, it had been a two-time thing.

“Okay.” He shrugged. “Fine.”

“All right?” Toye said warily. “So this fairy shit, you’re going to cut it out?”

 _Don’t push your luck,_ Luz thought, and what remained of his smile became wooden.

“Sure, Joe, your virtue’s safe with me.”

“Okay.”

Toye’s mouth quirked in a grateful smile, and he patted Luz’s elbow before leaving the room. Luz watched him go, leaning against the bunk and feeling totally deflated. He went back to his own bed and laid down to try and finish his letter, but the tip of the pen would only trace the same wobbly circle over and over in the margins, and eventually he set pen and paper aside and curled up with his pillow.

George had no idea how long he lay there with embarrassment and frustration wrestling inside of him. He didn’t cry, but his stomach was aching and he was profoundly grateful that there was no one else in the room. What was his _problem_? It wasn’t like he had come to the Army looking for a man. He had turned down all those guys at Toccoa for precisely this reason. He was here to fight a war, not to get hung up over someone who didn’t give a shit. He had laughed at Tipper for getting a crush on Liebgott—when had that changed?

Maybe when Tipper and Liebgott had actually gotten together. Luz had seen them sneaking off together a couple times when they were in Britain, and every time he’d felt a surge of affectionate feeling, a _those two crazy kids_ type of approval. Chuck was having a grand old time of it, too, first in London and now in Paris. And even if Gene’s love life wasn’t terribly exciting, maybe it was what made Luz most envious, because he’d been with his lover for years. Luz hadn’t been totally sure that that was even _possible_ for two men, but now that he saw the evidence with his own eyes, he wanted it. He wanted it like hell.

 _From Toye?_ his inner voice snarked. _That was your plan?_

But after maybe half an hour of moping, George’s spirits rallied. He wasn’t exactly chipper, but he was tired of this bullshit, so he stood and wandered around base for a while. He ended up in the rec center, watching a movie—and as it happened, there was a free seat just behind Toye. He got vicious satisfaction from needling Toye throughout with commentary on the movie, although it was too bad Lip got caught up in it, too.

Once, Toye turned around to glare at him, but Luz met his gaze and raised an eyebrow, daring him to say something, and Toye turned back around and crossed his arms. He only had a few minutes to enjoy the feeling, however, before the lights flickered on and a technician stomped through the aisle.

“Quiet!” he demanded as everyone started complaining. “Elements of the 1st and 6th SS Panzer division have broken through in the Ardennes Forest. Now they’ve overrun the 28th Infantry and elements of the 4th. All officers report to HQs, all passes are cancelled.”

There was another outbreak of complaints, but he only ordered the enlisted men to report to their barracks, and half of the people in the room were standing before he had even finished the sentence. They had orders to obey. They knew the drill.

Luz stood, muttering under his breath, and pulled his Lucky Strikes out of his pocket. To his surprise, Toye fell back with him, holding out a hand. Luz passed him a cigarette and they walked out of the room together. He felt like he should say something, but he was wary. He had been downright petty, and yet Toye didn’t look like he was wanted to strangle him anymore. Was he calling a truce?

“Sounds like it’s gonna be a tough one,” Joe commented in his raspy voice.

“Yeah, well. Given a choice, who would you rather spend Christmas with, a bunch of angry krauts or Sobel?”

“Always looking on the bright side, huh?”

Toye’s mouth curved just slightly, and Luz swallowed. Suddenly he was tired. Real fucking tired. He spent most of his own time clowning around for everyone else’s benefit—maybe not everyone else _pretended_ as much as he did. Maybe Toye really wasn’t gay. Maybe he was just as self-possessed and sure as he came off. In any case, what was the point in being mad? They were going to fucking war. He had other things he should be worrying about.

“Yeah.” There was a crush of people heading towards the main entrance, so Luz nudged Toye with his elbow and directed him down the hallway for the back door. The hall was quiet except for the thunk of their footsteps. “Hey, listen, Joe—I, uh, I’m sorry about before, okay?” he said in a low voice, and they both knew he wasn’t talking about the movie.

“Luz—”

“I got the wrong idea and I didn’t want to admit it. But I get it now, and I’m sorry. So no hard feelings?”

“No hard feelings,” Toye repeated. He scuffed the toe of his boot against the floor. “I shouldn’t have said what I said.”

“Forget it,” Luz shrugged.

“No, I mean it. That was out of line.” They had reached the door but neither made a move towards it; they just stood there at the end of the hallway, facing each other. “You’re a one of a kind, you know that, Luz? Crazy, but one of a kind.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” he smiled. Toye was staring at him again, and this time he was self-aware enough to realize that he shouldn’t spend too much time pinned by his dark eyes. He cleared his throat. “I should get going. I don’t have any ammo left, so I should see if I can rustle some up before we leave.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Luz was so focused on trying to decipher the lines around Toye’s eyes that he didn’t realize that he was about to be kissed until it was over. He stared back in total bewilderment, with the taste of cigarettes on his mouth and five burning spots on his neck where Toye’s fingers had pressed against his skin, as the other man stepped back and pushed the door open. A river of cold air rushed between them.

“Good luck over there, all right?” Toye said, and then he was gone.

—

Gene was from Louisiana. He had never given a thought to what it might be like to freeze to death until he dug into the frozen earth of Bastogne. Then he thought about it with depressing frequency.

The worst part, he thought, was the way that the cold slowed everything down. The only time he was ever warm was when he was running through the trees during a battle, sprinting from foxhole to foxhole and trying not to get caught by the fire of German guns and artillery. Everything was happening too quick, then. But in the gaps between, he was slow to react, and he worried that the cold was seeping into the rest of him permanently, hampering his carefully-developed instincts.

It was hard, too, because he hadn’t realized until now just how isolated he was without the rest of his queer friends. Easy Company didn’t spend much time in a group anymore, except at meals. For most of the day they were either on patrols that left the medics behind, or paired off in twos or threes and shared foxholes, and more often than not Gene found himself alone in his scraped den. Luz and Chuck had their own friends, their own men to worry about. They visited, but he didn’t want to bother them.

The man he spoke to most often was Ralph Spina, who at least he could talk to without fumbling for conversation. Spina was an easy fellow to hang around; he never seemed to notice that Gene didn’t know what to say, and it was through him that Gene was thrown around some of the other guys more, especially the other Philadelphia boys, Guarnere and Heffron. You never needed to talk with Guarnere, only listen, and he was fun to listen to.

Heffron, on the other hand…

Gene didn’t know exactly what was up with Heffron. Gene always tried to be perfectly polite to him, but it seemed the more polite he was, the more it annoyed Heffron. Finally one night he snapped “What is with the Heffron _bullshit_?” and that was when Gene realized that maybe Babe was one of those guys who was so friendly with everybody that plain good manners came off as pompousness.

Well, he didn’t know if he agreed with that. But the next day Heffron’s foxhole buddy was killed, and Gene decided that he couldn’t just do nothing about it, not when he had a full bar of chocolate in his pocket and a misunderstanding to correct. He waited until nighttime, hoping to catch Heffron alone so they could have a real talk, and found him in Spina’s foxhole after poking around in a few others. He slid down and bumped against Heffron’s shoulder.

“Gotcha,” he said with a bit of a grin—and then he froze, and realized two things at once.

First, Heffron wasn’t in the mood for jokes from Gene.

Second, he probably wasn’t in the mood to see him at all.

His gaze rested on Babe’s face for half a second, just long enough to take in a few key details. The redness of his nose, his downturned eyes, the lines between his brows. The way his helmet was pushed up and the hand resting on his cheek, fingers stroking the short hair just above his ear. Gene looked away, instinctively knowing that he had intruded on a private moment before his brain even realized what that meant, and then his eyes locked on Spina’s.

Ralph’s cheeks turned red. Casually he dropped his hand to Heffron’s chest and patted twice, a nice manly gesture of camaraderie, before moving it away entirely. His other arm was around Heffron’s shoulders, and he pulled the blanket a little tighter.

 _Well_ , Gene thought. He couldn’t deny that he was startled—Heffron and Spina, _really_ —but he set that aside for the moment, and pretended that he saw nothing amiss. He kept his face studiously blank as he turned to fish the chocolate bar out of his bag.

“Heffron,” he said, offering it to Babe, but the man didn’t even seem to realize he was there. He hadn’t looked up when Gene entered. If he was alarmed at being caught in a compromising position, he didn’t let on.

“Edward, eat it,” Gene commanded as he broke the chocolate into chunks and pressed it into Babe’s hand again, and finally he reacted—more due to the ingrained habit of following orders, Gene thought, than anything else. “Good. Perfect.”

It was a quiet night, broken only by occasional rat-a-tat bursts of gunfire somewhere far away. The crunch of the cold chocolate was loud in the little foxhole.

“I promised him—if he got hit—I’d take his stuff home to his ma, you know?” Heffron said. His words were stilted and his voice broke.

Gene tried to reassure him, but his words fell on deaf ears. Spina didn’t say anything. His grip on Babe’s collar tightened, and then he moved his hand to his helmet and turned Babe inward as his body shook with that nasty cough he’d been fighting for a few days. Gene wondered if maybe he should leave, but Spina tossed a corner of the blanket at him, and so he pressed closer to them, grateful for the warmth. It didn’t seem like much, in the midst of the Bastogne cold, but he would feel it if he tried to leave.

He didn’t say anything. He had realized that there was nothing to say, and after a while, Heffron’s breathing turned slow and deep. Gene wanted to join him in sleep, but he kept his eyes opened, fixated on the crust of frost that lined the edge of Spina’s foxhole. He knew that Ralph was waiting to say something, and a few minutes later the other medic cleared his throat.

“Doc, I don’t know—”

“Ralph, before you say anything,” Gene cut in, his voice low so as not to wake Heffron, “I just want you to know you don’t gotta explain yourself to me.”

“I—what d’you mean?”

“Just what I said.” He shivered violently and curled up tighter underneath the blanket. “I figured you were gonna say something like I had got the wrong idea, and I don’t think I did. So I don’t need you to set me right.”

“Oh.” He paused for a long minute. “Are you—uh—”

“Mmhm.”

“Oh.” There was another pause, but this time the air felt more relaxed. “I wasn’t even—” Spina laughed softly. “I wasn’t even going to tell anybody or nothing. I know some guys fooled around on base, but I always thought it was too risky.”

“What changed?” Gene asked. He shivered again, and looked over to see Ralph staring at Babe with a fond little half-smile on his face.

“Babe offered. The other night, he just kinda wandered into my foxhole and…” He shrugged and hunched his shoulders. “I mean, who’s really gonna say no, huh? Look at him.”

“Yeah,” Gene chuckled softly. “He’s a dreamboat, all right.”

“Damn right.” Spina burrowed down further between the wall and the blanket with a sigh. “I didn’t even know for sure it was this kinda thing. You know? I knew we were sort of friends, and then more, but—up until tonight I thought it wasn’t anything serious, and then he came to me instead of Bill or anybody, and said he just needed—”

He broke off suddenly, maybe thinking that he had said too much, and rested his cheek against the top of Babe’s helmet. Again Gene was struck by the intimacy of the moment he was intruding on, and he thought about leaving. But Ralph wasn’t asking him to, and this was the first conversation he’d had in days that wasn’t about bandages, so he stayed put.

“Sometimes it’s like that,” he nodded. “Me and my… my fellow from back home…” His cheeks were perpetually hot in this weather, stung red from the cold, but he felt a blush rising beneath that. “I knew we were friends, but I wasn’t sure until—after he enlisted—”

His lips were numb. He didn’t know why he was having such a hard time describing a scene he could conjure up so clearly. There was something about being close to Heffron and Spina, feeling the warm weight of their bodies by his and hearing their quiet voices in the closeness of the foxhole, that was stirring up his mind. All he had to do was close his eyes and he was back in his apartment, tangled up in bed with Shelton, and he’d just banged his head against the wall on accident and wasn’t even sure if he’d really heard _I love you_ mumbled into the curve of his neck. He’d said it back anyway, quick and quiet in case he was wrong, and Shelton had cupped the back of his head and kissed him soft under his jaw.

And the next morning—

_“I really gotta go.” The words came out muffled against Gene’s mouth. He stepped back and let his hands fall to his sides._

_“Okay,” he said, clearing his throat. He moved to pick up the other man’s suitcase but Shelton beat him to it. “I’ll walk you to—”_

_“Nah, you stay here. That was goodbye enough for me. Don’t want to cause a scandal.”_

_His heart was pounding hard, and he swallowed and tried to smile._

_“First time I ever heard you say that.” The corner of Shelton’s mouth lifted, and Gene’s heart flipped over. A button on Shelton’s pocket was undone, and he lifted his hand to fix it, smoothed his palms over his lapels. “You look good in uniform,” he blurted out. “Pity about the dress blues, though.”_

_“Don’t think I’ll need ’em, where I’m going. Probably just get lots of blood on those pretty white gloves.”_

_His fingers twitched, digging into the thick wool fabric like claws. They weren’t supposed to talk about that. The war wasn’t supposed to be that real, not yet._

_“Gene, I’m gonna miss the train,” Shelton said, quiet-like._

_“Okay. I’ll let you go.” But his hands were still resting on Shelton’s stomach and he only wanted to press his fingers tighter. He took a deep breath and slid his hands around, squeezing the other man tight and resting his chin on his shoulder. “I love you.”_

_Shelton put his hands on Gene’s shoulders and pushed him away. They stood at arm’s length for a moment until Shelton bent his head, eyes drifting shut, and touched their foreheads together._

_“Love you, too, sweet,” he breathed, in a voice like dry grass underfoot. “Take care of yourself, huh?”_

He was staring at the frost again, white crystals running through the dirt like veins of bright iron ore, but if he let his eyes go out of focus that was Shelton walking away, back straight, cap crooked, down the hallway and down the stairs and down the cream cobbled street. Gene took a deep breath. The air was frigid enough to hurt his lungs when he breathed it in, a sharp pain that made a counterpoint to the ache in his heart.

“Gene?”

Spina’s voice had a worried edge that suggested it wasn’t the first time he had tried to get Gene’s attention, so he shook his head to clear his thoughts and looked over.

“Hm?”

“I said, is your guy in the Army?”

“Marines.”

“Huh. They’re supposed to be the goods, right? Where’s he serving?”

“Don’t know exactly.” He swallowed and stared up at the flapping tarp. “His unit was on Guadalcanal back in ’42 and ’43, but… I haven’t heard from him in a while.”

“That’s rough.” Gene was dreading the next question, but Spina seemed to realize that Gene didn’t want to talk about it. His fingers slowly traced the brim of Babe’s helmet. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing,” he admitted in a soft voice, and Gene found himself smiling.

“None of us do,” he said wistfully. “You just gotta… you’re never gonna know why he picked you, so all you gotta do is keep going your own way. Hope it’s enough to keep him. Try and shut everything else out.”

“Yeah.” Spina was quiet for a few more minutes, listening to the distant gunfire. After a while, he spoke up and said, “Hey, what do you call them Cajun healers…?”

—

The next few days were—difficult. The numbness kept spreading, and the guys kept getting wounded with little he could do, and Renee… he felt pathetic for grieving. He hardly knew the woman. But it had been nice to talk to someone who could _understand_. Nice to speak French for a while. To talk about what it really felt like to be a medic, a nurse, someone God or the Allied Forces had picked to do their best at healing people. It would feel like an insult to pretend he hadn’t needed that. So he let himself grieve, quietly, privately.

And when Babe showed him the cut going across the meat of his palm, Gene only hesitated for a second before he took Renee’s kerchief and tore it into strips for a bandage. She would understand.

“Hey, Gene,” he said suddenly. “You called me Babe.”

“I did?” he said, puzzled. “When?”

“Just now.”

“Babe,” he repeated. “Guess I did.”

“Babe,” Heffron said as Gene sprinkled sulfa powder on his hand. He drew the word out and deepened his voice—he could put Luz out of business—and Gene shook his head.

“So you and Spina, huh?” he said innocently as he wrapped the makeshift bandage around Babe’s hand. Babe’s mouth twisted in a funny way, like he was torn between wanting to smile and not. He quit laughing, at least.

“Yup,” he said shyly.

“That’s good. It’s good to have somebody out here.”

“Do _you_?”

“Not like that,” he smiled. “Just a couple of like-minded friends.”

“Oh.” Heffron glanced out at the line, but his eyes kept flickering over to Gene; even beneath the scarf, Gene could tell he was burning with curiosity. “Are there many?”

“In this company? A fair few. Luz—”

“That’s not a big surprise,” Babe snorted.

“—and Grant.”

“Are you serious?”

“Mmhm.”

“Damn.” Babe mulled this over for a minute, and shook his head. “I never met any before, you know,” he said. “I didn’t really think to look. It was just, after Doris… see, me and Doris, we started dating when we were fourteen and a half. I always thought we’d get married ’cause that was what happened next. I never even looked at anyone else. Then after I got her letter, it was like I sort of—realized maybe there were other options. He’s a nice guy.”

“That he is.”

“Easy to talk to.”

“Yep.”

Gene finished tying the bandage, and Babe pulled his hand back with a mumbled thanks.

“And, uh. Thanks for—before,” he mumbled.

“What, for cutting you?”

“No, I mean. The other night. You didn’t have to come and find me. I know we’re not really friends or anything, but—I appreciated it, you know?”

Gene nodded to himself and wrapped his arms around his torso. He wasn’t great at this—making friends. He was much better at sitting back and collecting anyone who came into his orbit, but who was he to overlook an opportunity like that? He cleared his throat.

“I’d like us to be,” he said casually. “Friends.”

“Yeah,” Babe grinned. “Yeah, sure. Pansies got to stick together, right?”

“Pansies with parachutes,” Gene laughed softly, and they settled back to watch the line.

—

Every part of him felt numb. Luz stumbled into a random foxhole that night, only knowing that he couldn’t stay in the one with a goddamn mortar sticking out of it, or in the one that was full of shrapnel and blood. There were plenty of empty ones to choose from. He slipped inside and remained there, staring at the wall, until Chuck joined him.

“Hey,” Chuck said, eyes scanning his face. “You okay?”

 _The fuck do you think?_ Luz thought reproachfully, but what he said was, “Oh, sure. I’m alive, aren’t I?”

“I thought you could use some company tonight,” Chuck continued. “It was a rough one.”

“Rough,” he repeated in a hollow voice. “Rough. Yeah. You got any Lucky Strikes left?”

“No, I’m all out.”

“All out? Shit, you barely smoke.”

“I gave a couple away. I’m sorry.”

Luz wanted to snap at him, but he bit the words back. Fuck, if Chuck wanted to give away a few of his own cigarettes, what was stopping him? Luz should’ve taken more care with his own, that’s all, except he had gone through his last two when the goddamn dead mortar fell in his foxhole and Lipton had taken up tobacco.

The two men were silent for a few minutes. Chuck was the best person to sit with. He never pushed for more than you wanted to give, and Luz could still appreciate that, even though he wanted to lash out and collapse inward all at the same time. Chuck didn’t give him the opportunity to do either, so instead he just sat still, arms wrapped around himself, until the tarp was lifted again.

“Hey,” Roe said in a muted voice. “Mind if I join you?”

“Sure, it’s a friggin’ party in here,” Luz said bitterly, and Roe slid down against his other side.

“Hard day today, huh?” Gene said.

“Fucking—Chuck said the same thing,” Luz said, shaking his head. “Jesus, what are we complaining about? I was two seconds away from getting hit dead-on by a mortar, we’re all healthy and whole with fucking limbs attached, and we’re sitting around saying it was a hard day? Hard day. _Christ_.”

He could sense Gene and Chuck looking at each other, and then Chuck wrapped an arm around him and Gene pushed closer.

“George, you just saw your lover lose a leg,” he said, in a voice so tender it made tears prick at the edges of Luz’s eyes. “That’s hard by any measure, okay? You don’t gotta be thankful just because it wasn’t you.”

“He wasn’t—” Luz’s cheeks were burning, but he wasn’t sure if it was from cold or embarrassment. “He wasn’t my lover.”

“I thought—”

“It wasn’t like that. We fooled around twice, but it was just—I was there. That’s all.”

He thought about Mourmelon-le-Grand, and if his lips weren’t so numb he might actually be able to recall the barely-there touch of Joe’s against his. Certainly he remembered his smell. Tobacco soaked into clean wool, and some kind of faintly minty aftershave that he must have bought in Paris, because it was far too nice to be from a Post Exchange. He remembered the press of fingers on the back of his neck and the spark—

Luz shivered and drew into himself even more. He shouldn’t think about that. It had hardly meant anything when it happened. Now—Muck and Penkala dead, Toye and Guarnere gone—and it didn’t matter at all. Tears were spilling out of his eyes anyway.

“So what?” Chuck said, squeezing him tighter. “You were there. He was there. That’s how all of this goes, isn’t it? You can still care.”

He shook his head.

“Stupid,” he muttered. “It’s stupid. I don’t even know if he—was it men, was it me, was it just— _fuck_.” He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “He’s gonna live, right doc?” he whispered.

“Yeah,” Gene said. He leaned against Luz’s shoulder and kissed his cheek. “Yeah, cher, he’s gonna be fine. He’ll get a prosthetic and a disability check. It’s gonna be a hard road, but the Army’ll take care of him.”

“Good.” All of a sudden he laughed. “Jesus, can you imagine what the brass would say if they could see us now? We signed up to be these brave patriotic boys who’d go off and kill krauts, and here we are, a bunch of queers crying all over each other.”

“They’ve got to have some idea,” Chuck mused. “All of those lectures we got about reporting anything odd to the CO... If you have any unusual feelings, talk to the chaplain and that’ll clear them up…”

“Yeah, ’cuz talking to the chaplain is going to stop people from wanting their dicks sucked,” Luz snorted. He sniffed and wiped at his eyes again. “Stop guys like Tipper from mooning after pretty boys like Liebgott.”

“Spina and Babe,” Gene mumbled.

“Really?” Chuck said, raising his eyebrows.

“Mm. Talked to them the other day. It’s a new thing.”

“God fucking bless them.” Luz sighed and leaned his head back against the dirt. He wished he hadn’t cried; the tracks it had left on his face were even colder than the rest of him. “We’ve got to get out of here, boys,” he said wearily. “This place is going to kill us all.”

Neither Gene nor Chuck said anything, but both of them curled up against his sides, and between them, Luz felt warm and safe. As warm and safe as you could be in Bastogne, when grief was still sticking his throat like an icicle. Eventually, he slept.

—

Hagenau was cold and wet and miserable. But it wasn’t Bastogne. And the really marvelous thing about Hagenau was that the company was stationed in buildings—real, honest-to-God brick buildings with furniture and fireplaces and (in a few rare cases) locking doors. It wasn’t _easy_ for Chuck to commandeer an empty apartment, but he traded in a few souvenirs, called in a few favors, and withstood five full minutes of scrutiny from Captain Speirs. Finally he went to Malarkey and got his weary consent to take Babe for the night on a little morale-booster. Lord knew they all needed one.

He found Babe in the basement kitchen, along with Ramirez and McClung, all extolling their good luck at having a night off instead of going on another useless patrol.

“Babe, c’mon,” Chuck said, patting his arm.

“Where to?”

“Hey, who’s the fucking sergeant here, huh?”

Ramirez and McClung jeered, and Babe rolled his eyes, but he followed dutifully. Liebgott passed them in the hallway, and Chuck stopped and grabbed him by the elbow before he could think about it.

“Hey, Joe,” he said. “Some of us are gathering in the house across the street for a while if you want to join us.”

“Yeah?” Liebgott was tired, too, like all the rest of them, but for a second he looked up with interest.

“Yeah. Me and...” Chuck hesitated. “Some of the guys Tipper used to hang out with. You know.”

He could barely make out Joe’s face in the murky lighting, but he could see the way his jaw tightened and his cheeks turned brick red.

“No thanks, sarge,” he said in a clipped voice. He yanked his arm free and blew by them, and Babe was left staring after him.

“What was _that_?”

“Nothing,” Chuck sighed. “Come on.”

“Tipper,” he said thoughtfully. “I heard of him—he was a Toccoa man, right?”

“Yeah, he was wounded in Carentan. Pretty badly. He got sent home.”

“And he was…” He waved his hand vaguely. “One of you guys?”

“Gay? Yep.” They had left the house and were crossing the cold, snowy street. Chuck glanced around casually, but the only people he could see were Christenson and Keen, strolling away from them. He kept his voice low, just in case. “He and Liebgott had a thing, for a little while,” he admitted.

“Really? Liebgott? Huh.”

“It was just a little thing. Don’t make too much of it.”

Babe prodded him once or twice as they walked, wondering what they were doing, but Chuck ignored all questions. The building across the street had quartered Item, but they had just moved on to the next town and it was empty for the night. They walked up to the second floor apartment, and Chuck pushed open the door to reveal Gene and Ralph sitting together on an old embroidered sofa, poking at a camp stove on the coffee table. Babe’s whole face lit up.

“Hey!”

He crossed the room in three long strides and kissed Spina. Chuck quickly closed the door behind them as Babe lost his balance and fell clumsily onto the couch. He and Spina both laughed, and Gene shook his head fondly.

“Hello, Edward.”

“Hey, doc,” Babe grinned. He leaned over and gave Gene a smacking kiss on the temple. “What’s all this?” he asked Chuck. Chuck shrugged.

“I thought we could all use a night. Luz raided the Hershey boxes this afternoon so he had to get them from his pack. He’ll be here in a second.”

The truth of his words was proven just a minute later as Luz burst into the room, brandishing the chocolate triumphantly.

“Okay, who wants a Hershey bar? I only managed to get two, so you’ll have to split ’em up—”

“I thought you said you could get four,” Chuck said crossly, and Luz flashed him a long-suffering look.

“Listen, Chuck, I had to sneak these out with half a dozen guys around begging me for chocolate, okay? If they’d spotted me they would have rioted. Even with that, I managed to find three, but on the way over here I ran into Captain Nixon, and wouldn’t you know it, the man’s got a sweet tooth. So I traded a bar of chocolate for—”

With a flourish, he whipped a bottle out of his pocket, and Roe whistled.

“You got an officer to give up his own personal bottle of whisky for a Hershey bar? How’d you manage that?”

“Eh, one bar for half a bottle, that’s a fairer exchange right? And it helps that I think he drank the first half before I ran into him. Cheers, boys.”

He fell into a chair and took a swig from the bottle before passing it to Chuck. Chuck lifted it to his mouth and paused for a moment to inhale the smell—God, he hadn’t had a sip of hard liquor in so long even the fumes were enough to make his eyes water. He took a mouthful and shivered as it burned down his throat. Gotta hand it to officers, they had good taste. He snuck a second sip before handing it over to Spina.

“Don’t suppose you managed to get any chicory, huh?” Gene was asking when Chuck returned his attention to the conversation at hand. “I was trying to brew up some cafe au lait, and back home we always put a bit of chicory in it.”

“Sorry, doc, I don’t even know what the hell that is.”

“Plain’ll do. I’m just glad we scrounged up the milk. Black coffee’s well and good if you’re trying to stay awake, but it tastes like the devil.”

A blush of warmth overcame Chuck as he looked around, separate from the alcohol’s fire. He was glad he’d suggested this little get together; there was something overwhelmingly domestic about it, Gene fixing coffee, Spina shyly taking Babe’s hand in his, Luz whistling Oklahoma as he snapped chocolate bars into pieces. They all had other friends in the company, but lately a bone-deep weariness had settled into all the men. Everyone was putting up a front, pretending they were tough and capable and unaffected by the horrors they had seen—and that was hard enough without keeping secrets from your friends.

He wasn’t sentimental enough to think a night with gay friends, coffee, and chocolate was enough to fix everything, but at least it could offer a respite from that extra burden.

For a while they talked about the usual Army stuff—promotions and transfers, rumors about future maneuvers, the like. But that was soon passed over for more interesting fare. The story of how Spina and Babe got together was told again, with much embarrassing and teasing. Gene revealed that his marine boyfriend had been his first, too (although not his only, Luz made sure to interject), and the familiar photo of Shelton was passed around. Then Luz gave a rendition of his own loss of virginity that required quite a few hand gestures, ridiculous faces, and obscene sounds, and garnered several accusations of embellishment. Chuck obviously couldn’t follow that, but soon they were going over queer topics in general. After much conversation, they concluded that there could be no other couple hiding within the company without them knowing, although they amused themselves by speculating over the possibilities.

“Now I’ve got a question,” Luz declared, somewhat breathless because they were all giggly and campy by that point. He knocked back a sip of whiskey and looked around at them slyly. “If you had to pick an officer…”

It took them a moment to wrap their minds around the allusion, and then it was met with laughter and jeers.

“Oh, that is not a proper question,” Gene said in a prim voice, although there was a grin tugging at his mouth.

“Will you listen to this queen!” Luz spluttered. “You all know she met her man on a goddamn street corner, right?” he demanded of the rest of them. “And here you are telling me off for asking a simple question. _Please_.”

Chuck almost couldn’t breathe for laughing. It had been a long time since they had had enough privacy to joke so openly, and Luz was taking full advantage. He had drunk maybe a little more whiskey than the rest of them; his cheeks were pink with alcohol and delight, and he was lisping and flapping his limbs all over the place. Gene was more restrained, but there was something performative in his manner that made Chuck think of Scarlett O’Hara.

“You done?” he asked coolly. “‘Cuz I said it was an improper question—I ain’t never said I wouldn’t answer it.”

Chuck, Babe, and Spina howled with laughter again, and after a moment of dumb confusion, Luz joined in. Gene shook his head.

“Damn fools. Now what exactly are we picking officers for?”

“Fucking,” Luz responded promptly.

“I know that, smartass. I mean are we talking once or going steady? Because I would say Captain Nixon for a night, but Captain Winters for a lover.”

“Huh,” Chuck said thoughtfully. “Why’s that?”

“Nixon seems plenty fun,” Gene shrugged. “But Winters is the kind of man who’ll be good to you day to day. Nixon’s just too wild.”

“You met—your man—on a street corner,” Luz repeated slowly, and Gene smacked his arm.

“Uh huh, and one wild boy in my life is enough. I’m not about to be dragging Nixon and his booze stash behind me all the time. Now would you stop hassling me and answer your own damn question?”

“I say Welsh, easy.”

“He’s got a girl back home,” Chuck reminded him. “He showed me a photo once, on the way to Normandy—she could be Greta Garbo. Trust me, he’s not going to be stepping out on her.”

“Hey, it was a hypothetical question, all right? I just think me, Welsh, and a bottle of gin would have a good time. Or maybe Lipton. I know, I know, he’s married, but sometimes it’s worth trying to draw out the quiet ones, you know? Next, Babe, what about—oi! You two gonna participate in the conversation or should we give you the room?”

Babe and Spina had been curled up together against the arm of the couch, exchanging little kisses that were almost certainly less discreet than they thought they were, but at Luz’s words they jumped and pulled apart, looking sheepish.

“Sorry,” Ralph said, clearing his throat.

“You are not,” Chuck accused.

“No,” he agreed. “But if I say I am, it sounds more polite. What was the question again?”

“Officers,” Babe reminded him. “I dunno, Luz, I can’t think of any. It’s like—like thinking of your big brother or something.” He considered it for another moment, and a boyish grin spread over his face. “Maybe I would let Buck buy me a nice steak dinner and smooch a little on the front stoop, but that’s as far as I’d go. No officers for me.”

“Hear that, Spina?” Luz snorted. “Make sure you don’t get a commission, eh?”

“You’re an asshole, Luz,” Babe said with pink cheeks. Spina ducked his head, and Chuck stretched out his leg to kick at Babe’s boot.

“Ignore him, Babe,” he advised. “That’s what we’ve all been doing since Toccoa.”

“I can’t think of anyone either,” Spina mused. “Winters is good-looking and all, but even when we’re on base, all he does is study battle plans, go to church, and do PT. I don’t think he’d be that good a date.”

“We’re not talking about dates,” Luz chided him, and Spina shrugged one shoulder.

“Or the other. Whatever.”

“That’s a cop out,” Luz said, clucking his tongue.

“That’s my answer. What about you, sarge?”

“I can’t believe none of you have brought him up,” Chuck grinned. “I say Speirs, without a doubt.”

“Speirs?” Babe yelped, and then immediately dissolved in a fit of wheezy laughter. Luz and Spina laughed too, shaking their heads, while Gene simply raised his eyebrows.

“What, you all don’t think he’s attractive?” Chuck said curiously.

“Attractive? Christ, sarge, a tiger looks nice but you wouldn’t want it for a pet, would you?”

“Yeah,” Luz agreed. “Speirs is like—he’s like one of those frigging bugs that fucks you and then bites your head off. No fucking thank you.”

“Oh come on.” He rolled his eyes. “You’re not telling me you really believe all those stories, are you?”

“What, you don’t believe any of them?”

“I believe that people are dumbasses. You know, the first three times someone told me that Speirs had shot his sergeant, they didn’t give any reason? They wanted to make him sound crazy, so they told the story that sounded better, or they just repeated the wrong story someone had told them. And then the _fourth_ time I heard it, it was from a corporal from Dog Company who said he was there, and the man was drunk and reaching for his sidearm. Hell, George, _I’d_ shoot _you_ if you were drunk and reaching for your sidearm. That doesn’t make him dangerous.”

“And the German POWs?” Roe asked. Chuck shrugged.

“I don’t know. I’m just saying I don’t put much stock in rumors. And hey, the question is who we would sleep with, right? Doesn’t mean he’s got to be a perfect person, just good in bed.”

“Got a point there,” Roe asked with a slight smile, and he lifted his coffee cup in a toast. “Speirs is good-looking, I’ll give you that—and a man like that, I doubt you’d be bored.”

“ _Thank_ you,” he said triumphantly. And then maybe he pushed it a little too far. “Besides, don’t you think Speirs might be queer?”

“Don’t I think—” Luz repeated, and then he laughed, “no, I don’t think Speirs is queer.”

Roe and Spina were similarly disbelieving, but Babe hesitated, and Chuck zoomed in on him.

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” he said hastily, raising his hands. “I’ve only been a part of this whole thing for a week, remember? But, well... maybe.”

“ _Maybe_ ,” Luz scoffed.

“Hey, why not, right? He reminds me a little of this guy back home named Pat Shea—do you know Pat?” he said in aside to Spina. “Everyone thinks _he’s_ queer ’cause he’s got this funny look, you know, and he goes on these long walks around the city and never tells anyone where—”

“There’s always someone from Philly,” Spina interjected, laying a hand on Babe’s forearm. He leaned forward to address the rest of them with a fond grin on his face. “Have you guys noticed? If it’s not Crazy Joe McKlusky it’s Tessie the Klepto or Sissy Shea—”

“Okay first of all, Shea’s plenty tough,” Babe said, affronted. “The last guy to call him that lost two teeth. And besides, all I’m saying is you never know. My mother always says there’s nothing new under the sun—If someone reminds you of somebody else, nine times out of ten there’s a reason. And looking back, I’m pretty sure Shea made a pass at me. So who knows, maybe Speirs is gay too.”

“Wishful thinking on his part,” Luz said, pointing at Chuck. “And loyalty to your sergeant on yours.”

“We’ve gotten off topic,” Chuck pointed out. “Point is, I would sleep with him. So we’ve established which officers we’re all mooning after, and that we don’t think anyone in the company is actually availing themselves of the opportunity. What else does your depraved little mind want to know, George?”

“Just for that, I’m not passing the whiskey back,” Luz said, sticking his tongue out.

“What about NCOs?” Spina proposed.

“Dangerous territory, Spina,” Gene chuckled.

“Everyone in this room is an NCO except you and Babe,” Chuck reminded him, but the medic only shrugged.

“Present company excluded, we’ll say. I was just thinking about what Babe said. It _is_ weird thinking of officers like that. I always feel like I’ve got to be on my best behavior around officers, but NCOs it’s another story.”

“Hey now, he’s right there,” Gene teased, nodding in Babe’s direction.

“Don’t make me kick you, doc.”

“You know what I mean,” Spina persisted, a smile playing on his lips. “It’s like you said, Gene, there’s some guys in the company I wouldn’t mind having just a fling with. Like, I don’t know, Liebgott, or Skinny.”

“Well, hey, Liebgott—” Babe began, but he cut himself off and looked at Chuck with a frown. “Should I—?”

“It’s not a secret,” Chuck shrugged. “Not here, anyway.”

“What are you talking about?” Spina said quizzically.

Chuck related Tipper and Liebgott’s story again, and as he did, the mood turned serious, just a little bit. It wasn’t enough to bring back the perpetual cold of Bastogne, but there was a bittersweetness there that they couldn’t ignore. London seemed a million miles and a hundred years away, and it was hard to believe it had been more than six months since any of them had last seen Tipper.

“I still can’t picture it,” Babe said with a shrug. “Liebgott just doesn’t seem the type, you know?”

“Well, he’s not _our_ type exactly,” Luz pointed out. “Otherwise he’d be here enjoying these fine victuals instead of starving out there.”

“You know what I mean. I can’t see him with—I mean I can’t picture the kind of guy he would go for. What was Tipper like?”

Chuck glanced at Luz and Roe, and he could tell they were both thinking the same thing he was. If things had gone differently, Tipper and Babe probably would have been good friends. They had the same sense of boyish delight in the world—or at least, before the war, they had. Now, after Bastogne, after Carentan… it was hard to think about.

“You’d like him,” Gene said finally. “Everybody likes him. He’s friendly to everybody—”

“He flirts with everybody,” Luz interjected.

“—and he’s a good listener.”

“You should write to him,” Chuck suggested suddenly. “Both of you. Tipper really liked meeting guys like us, and now that he’s out of commission he’s going stir-crazy. I’ve gotten a couple of letters from him.”

“That’s a good idea,” Luz agreed. “We’ve all got to keep in touch, after this is over. I say we pool our paychecks and buy a mansion in Newport, but being pen pals is the next best thing, isn’t it?”

They all agreed, and Chuck smiled to himself, even though there was a queasy feeling in his stomach. He liked the idea of keeping in touch, but as he looked around at his friends smiling and laughing, he realized that he was the only one to notice that Luz had uttered the forbidden word: _after_.


	4. Chapter 4

Years later, when Chuck looked back, the days surrounding the war’s end were fuzzy. He wasn’t sure why—alcohol might have been a factor, or the sheer emotional rush, or possibly the injury—but some of the critical moments were a blur. He didn’t remember how he had found out that Hitler was dead. He didn’t remember much about Landsberg, except for the smell and comforting Liebgott afterward. He didn’t remember some of the company’s most frequently-related exploits, like the incident with Goering’s car.

But there was one thing he did remember in perfect detail.

“You three, take the main rooms here and beyond,” Speirs ordered crisply, pointing across the Eagle’s Nest. “Grant and I are going to head this way. Try to leave everything intact.”

The other men nodded their assent, and Chuck slung his rifle around and followed the captain through to a stone balcony with a breathtaking view of the surrounding mountains. He knew he was supposed to be sweeping the joint, but he couldn’t help but gape at the view. Mountains in California were shorter, wider, and covered with scrub brush and dry grass, nothing like these huge craggy things—and looking out from the top of one was much different than taking a jeep through the valleys.

“Long way down, isn’t it?” Speirs said, peering over the side. “They say old Adolf’s afraid of heights, you know. He owns the place and he’s hardly ever here.”

“His loss, sir. So is it always this empty?”

“I don’t think so. Captain Nixon said something about Eva Braun—ah, here we go.”

He had pushed open the oak door at the end of the passage, and they found themselves in a bedroom. It had obviously sat empty for some time, but it was a woman’s room, and one that had been left in somewhat of a hurry. There were a few dresses crumpled on the floor of the open wardrobe, and a mess of accessories and cosmetics on the bureau.

“In the market for anything, Grant?” Speirs asked congenially as he poked through a jewelry box.

“Honestly, sir, I’m not one for souvenirs.”

“No?”

Truth be told, he found it a little creepy, scavenging trophies from the dead, but he wasn’t about to say so in front of Speirs. He crafted a more tactful answer.

“I’ve found that if you get in the habit of keeping souvenirs, they take up a lot of space. It’s one thing is it’s a Luger or something useful, but…”

“This could be plenty useful,” Speirs said, lifting a diamond bracelet out of the box. The room was dim, but still the stones managed to catch the light and glitter like stars. “Are you married, sergeant? Fiancee, girlfriend?”

“No, sir.”

“Trying to get one?”

“Not particularly,” Chuck said offhandedly as he circled the edge of the room, examining the elaborate tapestries.

“All right, so a pass on the bracelet. Here we go—cufflinks.” Chuck had made his way around to the door again. Speirs nudged him with his elbow as they left the room and held up his hand. “Always useful. Look, they’re nice—onyx, I think.”

Chuck stared at them in bewilderment and shook his head.

“Sir, I don’t—”

“Oh, take the damn cufflinks, Grant. You know the frogs will take everything that’s not nailed down if they ever get here, and you’ll have run up the mountain for nothing.”

“All right then,” he said. He held up his hand and Speirs deposited the cufflinks in his palm with a flourish. “Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t mention it. Consider it a tip from Uncle Sam.”

Speirs flashed him a grin, and Chuck smiled bemusedly as they continued down the hall. They didn’t find anything remotely interesting, until Speirs led them down a short stone staircase into a darkened room. They both lifted their guns warily, but it was dead silent, and after a moment, Chuck’s hand brushed against a light switch. He flicked it on, and they found themselves standing before a wine cellar.

Chuck’s feet starting moving toward the racks of their own accord; Malarkey had claimed the only bottle of wine in the kitchen, and it had been a hot and thirsty run up the mountain. He had only taken two steps when he realized that his commanding officer was standing right next to him. He sent a hesitant glance at Speirs.

“Not very big,” the other man said critically as he surveyed the room. It seemed pretty big to Chuck; he counted six shelves that stretched from floor to ceiling, and there wasn’t a single empty spot on any of them. “You’d think Eva would be more considerate of her guests. But it should serve our purposes, I think—try and keep it to one bottle per man, all right sergeant?” he suggested in a dry voice.

“Absolutely, sir,” Chuck replied solemnly.

He wasn’t a huge wine drinker, and peering at the labels he found that many of them weren’t even in English, so he ended up just choosing four bottles at random, two white and two red. The others would just have to appreciate what they got. Suddenly there was a dull pop behind him, and Chuck turned to find Speirs with an open bottle and a cork impaled on a pen knife. He tilted his head back and took a swig from the bottle; as he lowered it, a drop of wine trickled out over his lips.

Chuck was fully aware that, if Speirs were not such a handsome man, this would not be appealing. As it were, he was unashamed at following the progress of the raspberry trail as it moved over Speirs’ jaw to end at the hollow of his throat. He was slightly ashamed when Speirs looked back and caught his eye, but after years in the Army Chuck had enough experience playing dumb for an officer’s benefit. He cleared his throat, but his eyes were wide and innocent, and he didn’t blush.

“Not bad,” Speirs said, lifting the bottle. “Too sweet for my tastes, though.”

“I like sweet,” Chuck replied, proud at the steadiness in his voice. The captain was maintaining eye contact, and he wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a test or a come on.

 _The first one, of course_ , the rational part of his mind chided him, but the other part was captivated by the fact that, in the poorly-lit cellar, the gold specks in Speirs’ eyes dimmed, leaving the irises a pure forest green.

“What’ve you got there?” Speirs asked, stepping closer, and Chuck held out the bottle silently. “Here, you try this.”

They traded bottles. Speirs dug his pen knife into the cork again and opened it with ease, and Chuck tasted the bottle in his hand. It was sweet, but he liked it; there was a sharp bite to the flavor at first, which was then soothed by a mellow fruitiness, and the overall effect was pleasant.

“This will do for me, sir.”

Speirs took a sip from the other bottle and nodded.

“All right, we’ll swap.”

“This is a fair trade, right sir?” Chuck said, a smile playing at his lips. “You’re not just saying that because that one is more expensive and therefore better for officers?”

Speirs smiled at him, and Chuck felt an itch in his lower back like he wanted to shiver, although through sheer force of will he kept his body still. He could almost understand why the other men were afraid of Speirs, when he smiled like that—the kind of smile began as a gleam in his eyes and spread slowly across his face. It did give one the sensation of being hunted.

As it happened, Chuck rather liked the feeling.

“Don’t you trust me?” Speirs murmured, and there was really no need for his voice to be that low, or for Chuck to find it so enticing. He paused for a moment, unsure of how to answer.

“Should I?” he said finally, and Speirs’s lips twitched.

“That is the question, isn’t it?” he mused, and without another word he turned around and walked out of the cellar.

Chuck didn’t know what the hell had just happened. The only thing he knew for sure was that the boys would get a kick out of it. He took a sip from his wine bottle and followed Speirs up the stairs.

—

By the time Chuck finished the bottle, the war was over.

And then the day went dark and turned to night, and there was a new taste on his lips, something like whiskey or rye, something bitter and potent. He was lost somewhere in town, lost in the good kind of way in that he wasn’t yet concerned about finding his way back. Suddenly someone called his name in a voice loud enough to catch his attention but low enough to keep from bouncing off the alley walls.

It was Speirs. Of course it was Speirs. His eyes were gleaming, cat-like, in the dark.

“Sir?” Chuck said.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Speirs said dryly, before stepping forward to kiss him.

He tasted like whiskey, too, better whiskey, and Chuck opened his mouth willingly and gave into the taste. It was a cold night and Speirs radiated heat from his mouth, his hands on the side of Chuck’s face, his body crowding close. His hands fell to Chuck’s hips and Chuck’s whole body became a flame of desire—except that one little corner of his mind that felt only triumph. _Told you so._

In the distance he heard Americans singing a wobbly rendition of “Shoo Shoo Baby,” and he broke the kiss.

“Should we…?”

He gestured vaguely towards the nearby houses—surely one of them must be empty—but Speirs pinned his wrists against the wall. They were tucked under a small archway, as private as one could be in a town crawling with American servicemen.

“No. Here.” His long fingers trailed down Chuck’s forearm, and he grinned. “You’re not wearing the cufflinks.”

“I’m saving them for a special occasion.”

“This doesn’t feel special to you?” With his other hand he popped the button of Chuck’s fly, and Chuck inhaled sharply. “All right?”

“Officers. You’re all fucking crazy,” he laughed. But to be obliging, he spread his legs. The wind was tickling his hair, chilling every part of him it touched, but Speirs’ hand was like a wick, trailing ever lower and leaving fire in its wake. His nose nudged Chuck’s ear and he kissed the soft skin there.

“Entertain many officers, sergeant?” he murmured as he hands slipped into Chuck’s briefs.

A British lieutenant in London. An American infantry lieutenant and a Free French captain, on two different days in Paris. Chuck was having an excellent war.

“Enough,” he demurred, and Speirs’ grip on his wrist tightened.

“Nobody who outranked me, at least?”

It was getting harder to concentrate. His throat was bone-dry and he swallowed before answering.

“Um. One. Or at least one equivalent.”

“American?”

“French.”

“Paratrooper?”

“I don’t—does it matter?”

“Not really. But it’s interesting to know, isn’t it?”

They didn’t talk much after that, except in whispered directions and cut-off curses. Speirs turned Chuck towards the wall and molded their bodies together, his breath still hot against his neck and his teeth sharp. Chuck wasn’t exactly a stranger to alleyway fucks—although in the past few years the beaches had been more in vogue among men in Los Angeles—and he was at a loss to explain why he was suddenly breathless. Was it the lewdness of having sex while still wearing his uniform, the shirt still neatly buttoned up to the collar even with his trousers shoved nearly to his knees? Or the giddiness of knowing that, were they to be discovered (and, to be fair, he sincerely hoped they wouldn’t be), it would most likely be by someone who knew him, not one of the many anonymous faces of L.A., London, Paris? Could it be the simple fact that the war was over or almost over, that they were so close to the _after_ he hadn’t let himself think about?

The obvious suggestion was that the difference was Speirs, that his hoarse voice really was that appealing, his Vaseline-slick fingers and his cock really that damn good. But Chuck tried to ignore that possibility, for his own pride if nothing else. It was tough to admit one man could have that much of an effect on him.

His pride was assuaged by the fact that Speirs came almost quickly as he did, and then remained still for several minutes, slumped against Chuck’s back and panting.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he breathed.

“I should…” Chuck began reluctantly.

“Hm?”

“I should go.”

“That’s one option.” Chuck was buckling his belt when Speirs’s hand closed tight around his wrist again. He brought his arm up and kissed his palm. “Alternatively, I could probably requisition any one of these houses. Which one catches your fancy?”

“First the cufflinks, now some poor German’s house,” Chuck snorted. “I’m starting to feel like a prostitute.”

“A pricey one,” Speirs grinned. “You should be flattered.”

“You keep telling me that,” he shot back, and it struck him very suddenly that he was _flirting_ with his commanding officer. Not trying to suss him out, not sleeping with him, but standing around and flirting. It was a pity, because really he was terrible at this kind of thing. He got all tongue-tied. He cleared his throat and glanced down the alley. “Really though, I ought to go. People will be wondering.”

“People always wonder,” Speirs said dismissively. He was fumbling with his pocket, and he pulled out a cigarette and stuck it in his mouth. “But hey, your choice. Got a lighter?”

Chuck had heard about Frank; he pulled out his lighter and kept hold of it as he leaned forward to light Speirs’ cigarette. The captain smirked at him in the orange light, like he knew exactly what he was thinking, and murmured his thanks.

“I suppose I’ll see you around?” he asked.

“Yes. Definitely.”

“Sir,” Speirs reminded him, and Chuck laughed softly.

“Yes, captain.”

“Sergeant,” Speirs drawled, and then he was gone.

Chuck stood still for a moment, shaking his head and trying to wrap his mind around the fact that _that had just happened._ When he left the alley, there was a little spring in his step. He needed to find the boys. Luz, Gene, Spina, even Babe—he was _never_ going to let them live this down.

—

“You have got to be kidding me,” Luz managed, but Chuck still had that dopey little grin on his face as they strolled down the cobbled road. It was mostly empty; it was early in the morning and everyone was all kinds of hungover.

“Nope. Told you I had a feeling.”

“Wishful fucking thinking,” he protested.

“Nope.”

“Goddamn.” He paused. “All right, give me the goddamn scoop. You can’t tell me you got lucky with our _commanding officer_ and then not give me details.”

“What kind of details?” Chuck said, thumbs hooked in his pockets. God, he looked like he was going to start whistling.

“Like was he good?”

“Luz, please. You’ve _seen_ the man, haven’t you?”

“Hey, looks can be deceiving. There was one fellow I knew back in Rhode Island, dead ringer for Cary Grant, six foot two, and—” He held up a pinky and Chuck burst into laughter and punched him in the arm. “I’m serious! _Major_ disappointment.”

“Well, this was not that. Not that I’m especially picky about size, but—” He cleared his theist. “Anyway, we were kind of, you know, tucked away in a little corner over here, and it was dark and we had to hurry, and it was _intense_. I swear I didn’t breathe the entire time. He’s just so—” He waved his hand uselessly. “I mean you can’t think about anything else when he’s there, he takes up so much of your attention—”

“Like a fucking tiger,” Luz said, shaking his head. “This is crazy. You’re crazy. And I _still_ can’t believe he’s even gay.”

 _What were the fucking odds?_ he thought. He almost wanted to rub Chuck’s face in the fact that he thought there were only three queer men in all of Easy, but that wasn’t nearly as fun as it had been when they had discovered Gene, not when he was already looking so pleased with himself. No, what he really wanted to do was have someone confirm that this affair with Speirs was nuts.

As luck would have it, they turned the corner and stumbled across Liebgott, leaning against the wall and having a cigarette. _That’ll do,_ Luz thought immediately. Maybe not as satisfying as Gene or Babe, but at least he trusted Joe to see reason.

“Hey, Liebgott,” he called. “I’ll bet you three packs of cigarettes and a Hershey bar you can’t guess the dish I’ve got for you.”

“Hey, fellas.” Liebgott looked up at them without much enthusiasm, but Luz didn’t let that deter him.

“Guess who Chuck is fucking?” he asked, digging his elbow into the rib cage of the man in question.

“No thanks.”

“Come on, give it a try.”

“Listen—”

“In a million years you’ll never get it, but—”

“I said keep me out of it, okay?” Liebgott hissed, eyes flitting over the empty street. “For fuck’s sake, what do I have to do to make you guys get it? I don’t want to come to your parties and I’m not going to dance with you and I don’t give a shit who you’re fucking. Just because—Ed—I’m not a queer, all right?”

Where had he heard that one before?

Chuck coughed behind him, and Luz smiled tightly.

“Jesus Christ, fine. Your loss.”

“Sorry,” Chuck mumbled, and Luz felt his irritation flare again even as they moved to keep walking.

It wasn’t fair. Chuck was a decent guy who didn’t talk about himself that often; he preferred to listen and laugh and do all the things a good friend did. Now for once he had something to brag about, but instead his smile had faded into a subdued frown. He and Liebgott had been friends since Toccoa, and he couldn’t even pretend to listen for two minutes?

Luz was getting tired of having the words queer and fairy hurled in his direction, too. When it came from a straight guy there was nothing to do but grit his teeth and bear it, but from someone who ought to fucking know better….

Suddenly he decided he’d had enough, and he stopped in his tracks.

“You know what, I feel so sorry for guys like you—” Luz lashed out, and Liebgott’s face turned red.

“ _You_ feel sorry for—”

“—guys who can’t even admit who they are—”

“Who says I can’t?” Liebgott demanded. “And who—who gives you the fucking right to decide why I am, huh? See that’s the problem with guys like _you_ ,” he growled.

He leaned forward and made a concentrated effort to lower his voice, and jabbed his finger towards Luz’s chest. George had the powerful urge to reach out and break it; the only thing that kept him from acting on that urge was the knowledge that he would have to explain himself to Major Winters.

“You go around and you make your little cliques and you get used to thinking of yourselves like this and can’t think about anything beyond it. Who I _am_. That’s such fucking bullshit, Luz, you don’t have any goddamn clue. What—what are you going to do when you get married? Going to step out on your wife all the time because that’s who you _are_ , you can’t help it? At least I’m a grown man who can take responsibility for his actions.”

“That’s—that’s not—” Luz sputtered. “I take responsibility—I’ll own up to what I do—”

“Well, so can I, but that doesn’t mean I have to brag about it!”

“And who says I’m going to get married, anyway?” Luz wheeled on Chuck, who was watching the scene unfold with the kind of wariness usually reserved for live grenades. “Are _you_ going to get married?”

“I—I don’t—” Chuck’s gaze flickered to Liebgott, and then away. “Probably not.”

“Me neither. I’m not going to make myself and some broad miserable just because—”

“Well problem fucking solved, then,” Liebgott interrupted, his color still high. “You’ll be just like my uncle Avram. He never married, either, and there were always _rumors_. He lived alone, saw his family two times a year, died alone and had about six people at his funeral.”

“He probably had friends, Joe,” Chuck said. He looked uncomfortable; his hands were dug into his pockets, and his tongue darted out to wet his lips. “ _We_ all have friends.”

“ _I don’t give a shit_. What’s the point—what’s the fucking point if you don’t leave anybody or anything behind? It all just—it gets packed up and sold and there’s nobody to say Kaddish for you, nobody to visit your grave, nobody to—to remember you, because your _friends_ can hardly admit that they know you! Bullshit. Bull fucking shit. That’s not the way I’m going to go.”

For a long moment, Liebgott and Luz just stood there glaring at each other. Liebgott was breathing heavily, and Luz’s muscles were so tense that he could feel himself shaking like a rattling engine. He wasn’t used to the feeling; he wasn’t, generally, an angry person. And as he struggled to come up with a response, he realized that he wasn’t angry so much as _sad._

“I spent a good couple years trying to deny it,” Luz said, and he was surprised at how raw his own voice sounded. “Trying to—to keep a secret from myself. And I hated every fucking minute of it. I can’t fucking _pretend_ all the time, I can’t just—set it aside and ignore everything that makes me happy. That’s not the way I’m going to _live_.”

“Good for you,” Liebgott said with a nasty curl to his lip. “Keep me the fuck out of it.”

He pushed past them and they turned to watch him go; he made it barely ten feet before Chuck raised his voice and asked, “Are you still getting letters from Tipper?”

Liebgott wheeled around.

“That’s—that’s not—that’s none of your business,” he spluttered.

He spun on his heel and stormed off, leaving the two of them in his wake.

“Tipper’s writing to him?” Luz said in a tone of mild surprise. He didn’t know what to make of the information.

“Yup.”

“How’d you know that?”

“Ed mentioned it in passing.”

“Huh.” He paused. “Shit.”

“Yeah,” Grant sighed.

—

“Do you think being conquering heroes makes sex better?” Speirs said thoughtfully as he caught his breath. “Or are we just really good at this?”

Chuck snorted, and leaned over to pick up the half-full bottle of wine they had left on the floor, within convenient reach.

“Could be both,” he suggested as he took a sip. It was drier than he usually liked, but it sent a delightful little zing up his spine. “Wine tastes better when it’s stolen, so there’s that.”

“It does.” Ron pried the bottle from his hand and took a swig. “Although we really shouldn’t be drinking this right now. You heard the major. Party’s over. PT time again.”

“I heard.” Chuck yanked the bottle back and shifted sideways, out of Ron’s grasp. “I also heard you assigning me nighttime crossroad duty, so thanks for that.”

“Oh, come on,” he wheedled, darting over for a kiss. “It was Harry who suggested second platoon. What was I supposed to say, ‘actually can we give Sergeant Grant the night off so he and I can engage in acts of sodomy?’”

“I would have appreciated it, yes.”

Speirs laughed and tried to swipe the bottle. Chuck leaned away, and they wrestled over it for a minute. Then the bottle slipped out of Chuck’s hand and spun across the floor, wine pouring out the whole way.

“Damn,” Chuck sighed. “That _was_ very good.”

“Yeah?” A mischievous glint came into Speirs’s eye, and he leaned down for a slow, filthy, wet kiss that left Chuck glassy-eyed and stupid by the time he pulled away. “Mm, I agree.”

It took Chuck a minute to remember what they’d been talking about. Wine. Enough of that. He should be cleaning up, getting dressed, but the feeling hadn’t fully returned to his knees yet, so he continued to lounge against the headboard.

“What are you going to do after?” he asked absently as Speirs took a cigarette out of the pack on the nightstand. He was thinking of Shifty, who would be heading home the next morning. What an odd idea—that the war would end for good.

“Oh, _after_.”

He flicked his lighter open and lit his cigarette; without thinking, Chuck reached over and took it. Most of the men were light on smokes nowadays. Sure, the PX was handing them out hand over fist, but they made for great trade with the locals. Speirs, though, always had plenty on hand, and no one ever asked him to share.

Chuck took a drag from the cigarette, and realized Speirs was staring at him.

“I’ve shot people for less than that.”

“No, you haven’t.”

“Go out and ask a few fellas about D-Day, you’ll see.” Chuck flashed him a dubious look, and the corner of Ron’s mouth lifted just slightly. Chuck was getting rather fond of that grin. It was more genuine than the wide smile that Speirs used when he wanted to intimidate people. He lit another cigarette and sat back against the pillows. “You’ve never asked me about that,” he said casually.

“Hm?”

Speirs exhaled a mouthful of smoke.

“The rumors. You’re the only—” He paused, for want of a word, and waved his hand vaguely. “ _—friend_ I’ve got in the company who hasn’t even hinted at it.”

Chuck shrugged.

“Would you tell me if I asked?”

“No,” Speirs grinned crookedly. “Still. Most people, if they might be sleeping with a murderer, would want to know.”

“You’re not a murderer,” Chuck said immediately. It was a gut reaction; he almost laughed at the absurdity. “You’re a soldier. And an officer. When you’re in that sort of position, you have to make quick decisions, and sometimes those decisions look pretty fucking crazy from the outside. I wouldn’t accept them from—I don’t know, someone like Shane or Dike, someone who doesn’t actually care, but you _do_. So I’m just going to trust you knew what you were doing.”

The corner of Ron’s mouth twisted. It wasn’t a smile, per se—as a matter of fact, he looked disturbed by the answer, and his only response was silence.

“What?”

Speirs folded his arms, and beneath the blanket his legs shifted uncomfortably. He rolled his cigarette between his fingers as he stared off into the distance.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I’ve been thinking about this lately. See, it occurs to me that if you follow that to its logical conclusion—the perfect soldier disregards his ego and his civilian sense of morality, and adopts the one that his government tells him is correct. Right? That’s what you’re saying, that I can shoot someone for something that, in peacetime, isn’t a crime, and everything’s hunky dory because the US Army told me so. Well. What if it _wasn’t_ the US Army?”

“I don’t follow,” Chuck frowned.

“I’m saying, is there some fellow out there wearing a German uniform, overseeing a camp like Landsberg, telling himself he’s just being a good soldier? If you dropped me in Germany and raised me as a German, would I be that man?”

“No.”

Speirs stared at him.

“That’s it? No?”

“That’s it.” Speirs was still frowning at him, dissatisfied with the answer, and Chuck sighed and looked down at the bedspread. He could always _feel_ it when Ron was staring at him; it wasn’t unpleasant but it made it hard to focus, sometimes. He frowned at the pilling fabric as he tried to find the words. “I didn’t say you were a perfect soldier. I think you’ve got an officer’s training, sharp instincts, and the ethics of a good man. That’s enough.”

Speirs didn’t say anything. The bed creaked as he settled his weight closer to Chuck, and he reached out with one hand to tilt his face. He kissed Chuck on the lips, his mouth the taste and weight of smoke, and they were still for a moment. Usually they didn’t engage in much pillow talk, or even much touching, really, aside from fucking. But this… he liked this. Speirs leaned back against the headboard, arm brushing against Chuck’s as he did so.

“When this is over, I’m going to rob banks,” he said.

“Okay,” Chuck snorted.

“I’m serious. I’m going to find all the banks in the country that have skylights and parachute down to rob them. Make use of all those skills the Army gave me. You’re welcome to join in, if you like—fifty-fifty split of the profits. Oh, and we’ll need someone to pilot the plane, so if you’ve got any Air Force buddies, let me know. How does forty-forty-twenty sound?”

His voice was light but he fixed his eyes on Chuck’s face with his usual steadiness. It was a more serious look than the question demanded—but then again, maybe Chuck’s original question hadn’t been as casual as he pretended either. He was thinking about Luz and Liebgott’s fight, about what men like them would do as time went on, when they were back in the normal world and had to become normal people again. He wasn’t expecting a declaration of eternal fidelity or anything as ridiculous as that. But he did wonder. All those men he’d met for a night, an hour—what were they doing now? Were they still going out at night or had they given it up? Were they married? Did their wives know? Did anybody know?

He wondered how many of them would get married, how many would die alone, how many would find a man and hold onto him. Maybe not forever. But… for a little while. When they needed him. Maybe that was enough.

“Sounds all right to me, captain,” he managed, in a voice that was steady but quiet. The corners of Speirs’s mouth softened into something just short of a smile.

“Good.”

Speirs was still wearing his watch, and his wrist twitched as he glanced at its face.

“Should I be going?” Chuck asked. “I do have crossroads duty tonight.”

“Nah, not yet,” he said. Casually he slipped his hand into Chuck’s, interlacing their fingers. “We’ve got time.”

_Kraut surgeon says he’s gonna make it._

Luz had spent the last forty-five minutes ignoring the possibility that Chuck might die; his relief therefore caught him entirely by surprise. It hit him like a wave of nausea, a watery feeling in his lower half that made his knees weak. _Oh my god, he could have died. Holy shit. He’s alive._ He exchanged a dumbstruck look with Floyd, and then turned around and chased after Speirs. He didn’t really know why, and he sure as shit didn’t know what he was going to say when he caught him, but he knew that someone should.

Speirs had only had a few seconds’ head start, but anger had coiled him as tight as a spring, and he had stalked across the lobby so quickly that he was halfway up a flight of steps before Luz reached him.

“Sir!” he called out, and froze with his foot on the bottom step as Speirs whirled around.

“What?” he snarled.

Jesus Christ, he was still holding his fucking bloody sidearm. There was blood on his cuff, too—Luz wondered with a jolt if all of it belonged to the hapless replacement downstairs, or if some of it was…

He tried not to stare.

“I, uh…” He glanced over his shoulder at the lobby behind him. He could still hear the jeers of the men as they dragged the bastard off to the MPs. They probably wouldn’t be able to hear him over all that racket, but with the way noise bounced off the marble, who knew. He took four steps up. “Sir, I—me and Chuck are really good friends. I know the two of you are close, and I wanted…”

Speirs narrowed his eyes, and Luz fell silent. He could hear his heart pounding in his ears. He didn’t know how to finish his sentence—‘I wanted to offer you a shoulder to cry on’? The man was an officer. You didn’t talk to an officer like that.

But he still felt like he had to say something, because there _was_ a difference between being afraid for a friend and for someone you almost-loved. He knew there was a difference.

“I think you have the wrong idea, sergeant,” Speirs said in an icy voice, and for a second Luz doubted. Then he remembered that little private smile on Chuck’s face, his _I’m happy even if you don’t understand_ smile, and he pressed on.

“I don’t think I do, sir.”

“It wasn’t—” Speirs hissed, stalking two steps down, and then he halted abruptly and his cheeks took on a faint pink. Luz’s eyebrows rose unconsciously; if he didn’t know better, he would say that Speirs was flustered. “It’s nothing that _melodramatic_ ,” he spit. “It’s just—we were both in the right time at the right place, that’s all.”

 _It was just—I was there_.

The words hit him like a fist. Brass knuckles to the gut. He wanted a moment to catch his breath, but Speirs was staring at him with hard jade eyes, and he needed to say something.

_You were there. He was there. That’s how all of this goes, isn’t it?_

“I don’t think that’s how Chuck sees it, sir,” he managed. “He’s always saying how it’s dumb luck that any of us meet, so what’s the point in not...” He was fumbling over words worse than he ever had before, and he took a deep breath. “I think Chuck would appreciate knowing how much—that you’re helping as much as you are. When he wakes up, you should tell him. And—I know this is—hard—” He swallowed. “I’ve been in your position before, sir. I thought I should say something.”

Speirs worked his jaw for a moment, and then he nodded tightly.

“Good night, Luz.”

“Sir.”

Speirs turned and began to mount the stairs again. Almost as an afterthought, he slipped his sidearm into the holster.

Luz trudged downstairs, suddenly tired beyond belief. He wanted to wait up for Gene, but he had no idea when he’d be back. Knowing him, he might be camping at the hospital until Chuck woke up. No, he was just going to check in with Floyd and Frank and Babe and then go to bed. Fuck, it’d been a hell of a day. He yawned, and then froze in the middle of the lobby. Liebgott was hovering by the doorway.

“I was wondering where the fuck you went,” he said. Luz didn’t reply. “Listen, I know we—” Liebgott hesitated. He shoved his hands in his pockets and scuffed the toe of his boot against the tile. “The other day. I’ve been thinking about things differently lately, alright? Since Landsberg. About the future and all. But I don’t… I’m never going to be you, but I didn’t mean to shit all over you like that. I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” Luz said cautiously. “Yeah, okay. Christ, Lieb, I didn’t mean to be an asshole about it. I’m sorry too.”

“Okay. So we’re good?”

“Yeah, we’re good.”

“And if you, ah… if you hear something about Chuck before I do, will you let me know?”

“Of course. Yeah, I know you and him are buddies. I’ll keep you in the loop.”

“Thanks.” The air hung heavy with awkwardness. Luz really wanted to push past Liebgott and go to bed, but he waited in the middle of the lobby, sensing that there was something the other man still wanted to say. Finally Joe glanced at the stairs and blurted out, “ _Speirs_?”

Luz let out a short laugh.

“Yeah. Speirs.”

“Fuck.”

—

Babe shook Luz awake just before dawn. There were dark circles under his eyes; when Luz had gone to bed, second platoon had all been huddled together in one room, sitting in tense silence, and apparently Babe had never gone to sleep.

“Gene just got back,” he whispered. “Saw him through the upstairs window.”

Luz through off the blanket and stumbled out of bed, blinking quickly to brush the sleep out of his eyes.

“Okay,” he said groggily. “’Kay, I’m up. Whereizze?”

Babe jerked his head in the right direction, and together they hastened downstairs. They bumped down the narrow staircase and almost crashed into Spina and Roe at the bottom. Gene looked up at them, and Luz’s only thought was that he was dead tired. His eyes were black in his pale face, made even blacker by the dark circles beneath them.

“Hey,” he said hoarsely. “I gotta report to Speirs, but he wasn’t in the same house as the other officers. You seen him?”

“What about—” Babe demanded

“We’ll help you look,” Luz interrupted. “But Jesus Christ, take a seat for a minute. You look dead on your feet.”

Gene nodded, and Ralph took him by the elbow and guided him into a small dining room to the side of the foyer. There was a tablecloth edged with lace and tiny embroidered roses, and chairs cushioned with green velvet. It was a nice room, and Luz felt scruffy and dirty standing in the middle of it. He put a hand on Gene’s shoulder and pushed him down into a chair.

“You want something? Water, coffee?”

“No, thank you.”

Luz, Spina, and Babe exchanged glances. They were strung tight, wanting to ask but afraid to know—and then Babe put his hand flat on the table and spoke.

“ _Well_?”

“He’s gonna be okay,” Gene said in the same calm, quiet voice he always spoke in, and Babe exploded.

“Why the _fuck_ are you always saying shit like that, huh?” he demanded furiously. The strain of the night had done a number on him; his voice was high and his face was waxy white. “Okay? _Okay_? He gets shot in the goddamn skull and he’s lying there bleeding in a goddamn kraut hospital, who knows if he’s ever gonna wake up or what he’s gonna be like when he does—”

“Babe,” Ralph muttered.

“ _What_?” Babe rounded on him.

“Shut the fuck up,” Luz snapped, and that was when Babe finally seemed to notice that Gene’s hands were shaking.

Luz had known Gene for years, and he’d never seen his hands shake as badly as they were right now. Not on that very first jump, not in Bastogne, not in the aftermath of a battle when adrenaline was rushing through him. His shoulders were shaking, too, and his mouth was drawn in a tight line.

“Hey,” Babe said, all the anger drained out of his voice. “Hey, you okay doc?”

“’M fine,” Gene mumbled. He stood. “I gotta see Speirs… y’alright?”

“Gene, why don’t you come sit back down a minute, eh?” Luz suggested, as he guided the medic back down and sat at the table beside him. “Hold out your hands. Here, lemme get that for ya.”

There was blood on his hands. Not much, considering how often the medic had blood caked in his skin, but still Luz pulled out his canteen and spilled a little water over Gene’s hands. He took both in his own, working the water into the folds of his skin until the blood sloughed off, ruining the carpet beneath him. Gene let him without saying a word, and behind him Luz could sense Babe and Spina both sit down, slowly, like Gene was a wild animal they didn’t want to startle. He didn’t call attention to it and he didn’t stare at Gene; he just rested his hand on his shoulder and spoke in a soft voice.

“Talk to me, Eugene,” he ordered. “What happened with Grant? Is he really alright?”

“Yeah,” Roe nodded. “We found a surgeon. Got ’em to the hospital. We had to wait for a long time while they operated. Bullet’s out. That’s when Speirs left, right when they knew Chuck was gonna be okay, but he told me to stay in case the docs had anything else. Well now they’re saying the swelling don’t look too bad, all things considered, and the damage might not be as bad as they thought. Maybe have some trouble with talking and stuff, but it could be worse. And they think he’ll wake up in a couple of days.”

“Good. That’s good.” His hands were still shaking, and Luz reached out and held them, casually, patting his knuckles. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I…” His adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. “I can’t do this anymore,” he admitted in a hoarse voice. “It feels like nothing I do is good enough. I couldn’t help Tipper or Toye and Guarnere or Julian or Muck and Penkala, and all those people in the camps, and now Chuck—I can keep ’em alive a little bit, but a little bit just ain’t enough. And I’m starting to—” He looked up at Ralph, pained lines around his eyes. “I _hate_ it,” he admitted. “Every time I hear someone call medic I want to say ‘not me, get someone else to do it.’ I feel horrible for it but I think it anyway.”

“Yeah, I know,” Ralph said quietly. “I get it, Gene.”

“And if that weren’t enough—Shelton,” he said in a strained voice, like he had to drag the words out from deep inside him.

“Shelton?” Luz echoed. He was taken aback—that was not what he had expected to hear. “What about—” Dread seized him. “You haven’t heard—?”

“No, no.” Gene shook his head and swallowed thickly. “I haven’t heard anything. Not a damn word. I—I haven’t got a letter or checked casualty lists or nothing since we left Toccoa. Except—” His jaw locked and he was silent, eyes boring holes into the wall opposite him. Then suddenly he squeezed his eyes shut, and a tear brushed past his eyelashes. “His unit was in the newsreel they showed us,” he said, the words coming out quick and rough. “Okinawa. They were saying it’s the bloodiest battle of the war, Americans getting killed all the time. And I was sitting next to Captain Speirs in that hospital thinkin’ _God I’d hate to be in his shoes right now_ and all of a sudden I realized I might be. I don’t even know. Shelton could be—he could be—”

“Hey now,” Babe said quietly, but Gene shook his head and pushed on.

“He could be _three years dead_ and I don’t even know and I can’t do anything about it. There ain’t never anything—it’s just like I couldn’t help Tipper, and now Chuck. And even—” He swallowed again, but it seemed like once he had started he couldn’t stop. “Even if he’s okay… Shelton, I mean. I haven’t seen him for, God I don’t even know, four years? We’ve spent more time apart than we ever did together. I spend half my time thinking I’ve got to go home, I’ve got to get out of here, and half of it thinking I can’t go home because what if—what if—”

“Okay, hey, hey, enough of that,” Luz said. He rubbed up and down Roe’s arm briskly, like he was just cold and needed to be warmed up. “Listen, I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen, all right? Odds are, we aren’t even going to make it to Tokyo. The Japs are hanging on by a thread, and your Marines are going to snap it before we can even get on a plane. So then you’re gonna go home, and Shelton’ll be fine. He’ll be waiting for you and driving you crazy like usual, right? And if…” He cleared his throat and spoke in a gentle voice. “And if he’s not there, for whatever reason, then you just get right back on the train and come back up north and you’ll live with me. Yeah? We’ll go to salons, and drink rich people’s champagne, and I’ll provide for you, so you don’t even have to worry about finding work or anything. You think you’d make a good kept woman? Can you cook?”

“Better’n you,” Gene hiccuped. He laughed weakly and rubbed a hand over his face. “’M Cajun, of course I can cook.”

“Well, good, you can come cook for us when Luz drives you crazy,” Ralph interjected.

“Yeah,” Babe agreed. “Forget Rhode Island, Philly’s the happening place. You can come live with us and Toye and Bill. We’ll get a whole building just for Easy guys, like a twenty-four hour reunion. And Chuck and Tipper and everyone.”

“I’m being stupid,” Gene sighed. “I’m sorry. Chuck’s lying in that hospital and here I am—”

“We’re scared, too,” Luz interrupted. “We hate it here, too. Jesus, Gene, you’ve been propping the rest of us up since we landed in Normandy, you think we’re going to give you shit about being selfish for two seconds? If Chuck were here, he’d say the same thing.”

“Maybe.” Gene was staring listlessly at the tablecloth. He touched one finger to a faint brown spot and toyed with a tiny burn hole that Luz hadn’t noticed. Then he opened his mouth, paused, and said the thing that had been turning over in Luz’s mind all night. “What are we still doing here? The war’s over. We were all supposed to be home by now.”

Luz didn’t know what to say. He moved his chair closer and hugged Gene tight, and they stayed like that for a good long while. Ralph put his arm around both of them, his hand resting in the middle of Luz’s back. Babe pushed a Hershey’s wrapper crumpled around two squares of chocolate into Gene’s hand, and leaned against his other shoulder. Soon the four of them were breathing in time with each other, and there was no sound besides the occasional squeak of bedsprings above them.

The setting couldn’t have been different, but if Luz closed his eyes he was in the woods outside of Toccoa. It was a cool night and he didn’t know what was going to happen tomorrow. Fear was an ever-present thrum in his mind, the high-pitched sound of silence in his ear. But above that he could hear his friends breathing, too, and maybe even the steady thump of their heartbeats, and he felt—

Loved. Full of love.

He let out a great shuddering sigh and tightened his grip on Gene, and all three of them squeezed him back even tighter.

—

The war ended again. This time for good.

—

Gene couldn’t believe it.

They were really here, on American soil, and within the next twelve hours, every man of Easy Company would be on a train going home. He blinked up at the giant clock in the middle of the train station and tried to breathe, but it felt like his lungs were sucked dry. He almost jumped out of his skin when someone put a hand on his shoulder, and turned around, prepared to say goodbye to someone else; almost every man in the company had come up to him at some point in the last day, and he was already tired of saying goodbye.

“Oh.”

Without stopping to think, he flung his arms around Luz and squeezed him tight.

“Easy there, doc.”

“You’re leavin’, aren’t you?” he mumbled.

“Yeah.” Luz drew back, and Gene realized that Spina and Babe were with him too. “We all are. There’s a train right to Philly that leaves in ten minutes, and one going to Providence in fifteen.”

“I’ve got a while yet,” Gene frowned.

They all stood in a loose circle, staring at each other and not knowing what to say. Spina had gotten a haircut on the boat, Gene noticed, to look all nice and professional for his homecoming. But Luz had let his grow out. He hated having hair that was too short; he’d gotten his pass revoked by Sobel more than once for putting off haircuts. The memory made Gene smile. And Babe—well, he couldn’t put a finger on how Babe looked any different, except maybe something about his posture that made the uniform look more like his, less like something he’d found while playing dress up.

God, he was going to miss them.

“You’ll keep in touch, won’t you doc?” Spina blurted out suddenly.

“He better,” Babe said, affronted, and some of the tension seeped away as they laughed.

“I don’t have a private telephone,” Gene said. “There’s one in the hall… but if you write me, I’ll write back.”

“We don’t got a phone either,” Babe said as he rummaged through his pocket. “Or at least we didn’t when I left. Here, gimme your address.”

He pulled out an envelope, Luz offered a pencil stub and a scrap of note paper, and they all scribbled their addresses and any phone numbers they had access too. Silence fell on them again, and Babe and Spina checked their watches.

“We should…” Heffron muttered.

“Before we go—” Spina hesitated. “I—thank you. Both of you.” He rested a hand on Babe’s back, just high enough not to draw attention. “Before this… I never really told anybody, you know? Even people I knew were—all right.” He shook his head, casting rueful glances at the crowd. “Should’ve said something earlier. But you know what I mean, don’t you? You guys changed my life. Really.”

“Me too,” Babe interjected. “This whole…” he waved his hand. “Thing. I never had any idea it was like this, and now I’m really glad I do. You’re good people, you know that?”

Gene didn’t trust himself to speak, but he nodded tightly.

“Gee, thanks, Babe,” Luz muttered, genuinely touched. “I would’ve expected to hear that from you. Not after I hustled you out of those smokes.”

“I didn’t say I’d forgiven you for that,” Babe snorted. “Just that you’re good people.”

Suddenly a voice came out scratchy over the speaker, announcing that the train to Philadelphia was boarding, and they were out of time; they exchanged hugs and handshakes, Gene told them both “safe travels,” and then they were gone, just two more uniforms in the crowd. As he watched them go, Gene spotted Bull Randleman, Frank Perconte, and Floyd Talbert all peering around over the heads of the milling people.

“You’ve got folk looking for you,” he told Luz.

“I know. Forget about ’em for a minute. Gene, we’ve been through a lot together, huh? From Toccoa to Austria…” A frown was playing at his mouth, which was so unlike him, and his eyes were fixed anxiously on Gene’s face.

“Yeah,” he said quietly.

“So—so what I said—back there—I mean it.” He took a deep breath. “Any reason, if you want to get out of Louisiana, if you need somewhere to go, you come to me. Okay? For a weekend, for a year, I don’t care.”

Gene smiled, pushing away the memory of why Luz found it necessary to make that offer.

“You’re sweet.”

“I mean it, doc.”

“I know. And the same goes for me, George—my home’s always open.”

Luz hugged him again, and Gene held him tight until he heard Perconte’s voice in the background.

“There he is—hey, Luz!”

“Go on,” he said, releasing him with a sigh. “Have a good trip.”

“You too, Gene.” Suddenly a dazzling grin spread across his face. “And take it easy on the street corners, okay?” he added with a wink, and he slipped away into the crowd before Gene could do anything about it.

He smiled to himself, shaking his head, and sat down on a nearby bench to wait. A few more men from Easy came up to say their farewells, but none stayed very long. An hour after Luz left, Gene finally boarded a train, and promptly fell asleep. It didn’t matter; he had a long way to go.

It was late afternoon the next day when he arrived in New Orleans. He disembarked and took a deep breath. The city still smelled the same—he couldn’t begin to describe _what_ it smelled like, couldn’t pick out the different scents any more than he could try to make sense of the jumble of sounds. But it was home. He hefted his bag on his shoulder and touched his pocket for the hundredth time in two days. He had rented his apartment out to a friend’s sister who’d moved to the city to work as a welder in the shipyards, but she had sent him a telegram to tell him she’d gotten married and moved out, and to make sure he still had his copy of the key. He could feel it now, a small, comforting weight in his pocket. It crinkled against the old photo of Shelton. That had suffered a little more during the war; there was a permanent white line running right through the middle of his face, and the dog-eared corner had torn completely off. It didn’t matter. He didn’t need to look at it to know what he would see. Hadn’t for a long time.

Twice he got lost on the way to his apartment building, which was an unsettling feeling. He didn’t like to think about how long he had actually been away. But Gene refused to accept any rides, even though at least three taxis stopped and offered one. This was his city, and he’d find the way. And eventually there it was, a modest little four-story building on the corner. He recognized his balcony from his blue curtains in the window, and his heart leapt.

The building was quiet when he entered. Probably most of the residents were still at work, now that the shipyards and everything were actually hiring. He trudged upstairs and paused before his door, wondering if maybe his key wouldn’t work after all—if maybe he’d lost it and picked up someone else’s, or if it had just rusted away from disuse. But he put his key in the lock and turned it, and it opened smooth as ever.

And he was home. Really home. He looked around the small apartment and felt a vague sense of anticlimax. It was a little dusty, but Marcia had cleaned before she left and it didn’t smell musty or anything. The furniture was all the same. The way the light filtered through the curtains was familiar. It was just… home. He set down his bag by the door and let out a deep sigh.

There was a neat pile of letters on the kitchen table. He was too tired to read through them today—surely most of them would be nonsense—but Gene picked up the ones on the top and scanned the return addresses without thinking too much about it.

Then his heart stuttered.

The latest letter had a USMC stamp on the front.

He tucked the others under his arm and tried to open it with shaking hands; he damn near ripped the envelope in half and cursed, worrying over the letter. When he unfolded it, his eyes scanned the lines, unseeing—and found the signature at the bottom. _M Shelton_.

His knees gave out suddenly and Gene sank to the kitchen floor, pressing the letter against his chest as he gulped in air. Shelton was alive. He was _alive_ , he— suddenly he held the letter up again and checked the date at the top. Just two weeks ago. Yes, he was alive. Gene brushed away the tears that had sprang into his eyes and leaned against the cabinet to read the letter properly. It was short.

_Dear Gene,_

_Thought I better rite since the war’s over and everything. I came thru okay, but I got a Purple Heart on Guadalcanal. Looks good on my uniform. My unit is stashinned in China for a few more months, but the fiting is over and I will be home soon._

_M Shelton_

_P.S_. _tu me manq._

“Tu me manques,” he whispered. He took a deep shaky breath, and held the letter close again. Shelton was coming home. He was alive.

Suddenly everything he’d been pushing back rushed to the forefront of his mind, and if he wasn’t already sitting on the floor, that would have knocked him back. The war was over. It was _over_. He would never have to respond to a call for a medic again, never feel someone bleed out under his hands again, never send a man off to the hospital wondering if this was the last time they’d ever meet. And all of his friends were safe . Luz, Babe, and Ralph had all made it through without so much as a scratch, and barring a freak train derailment, were already home and in one piece. Chuck and Tipper had suffered a little more, and it might be they would be in the hospital for a long time—but goddamn, to be alive was enough, wasn’t it? When so many others weren’t?

And Shelton was coming home. Coming home to New Orleans. To Gene.

His mind was still swirling with doubts—how okay would Chuck be, really? what if something happened in China? how safe were any of them as long as they kept kissing boys and prowling street corners?—but for several minutes Gene sat there and let himself have a good cry, and felt better afterwards. He was actually managed a smile, and took out his photo of Shelton and smoothed it out on top of the letter. Soon.

He thought about writing to Luz. Just to let him know everything was okay, or would be. God, it was strange not being able to turn and tell him right away. Gene’s stomach grumbled, and he realized he had better go grocery shopping. Or, hell, maybe he’d spring for a night out. Lord knew it’d been a long time since he had some decent gumbo, and he didn’t have the patience to make it himself tonight. Then he remembered how he’d once promised to make Tipper some real Cajun food, and his heart twinged again.

As he stood, the letters under his arm slipped and fell to the ground, and he stooped to pick them up—and then laughed under his breath. The handwriting on one of the envelopes was very, very familiar. Gene leaned back against the counter and slit the envelope open. Inside was a letter from Tipper. He smiled softly to himself as he read it. It made him miss Tipper even more fiercely—but he could hear his friend’s voice as clear as if he were right next to him, and if they couldn’t be living on top of each other anymore, this was the next best thing.

_Dear Gene,_

_I’m home from the hospital, and the war is about over so you’ll be home too, and that means I can_ _finally_ _write an uncensored letter. I can’t even tell you how happy I am about that. It’s nerve-wracking, you know, writing to all you fellows knowing someone else will read it. Every other word I’m worried I’ll come off too gay and get one of us the boot._

 _Well. First of all I have to thank you. In my other letters I didn’t want to talk much about my injuries. I guess I was still nervous. But now everything’s settled. I’ve got a glass eye, some nasty scars, and a permanent limp, but the doctors tell me it’s a miracle I’ve got both feet (minus a few toes, but who needs those anyway?) and both legs and no infections. I told them forget miracles, I had a_ _medic_ _. (Remember when we met? I mean, when we “met,” when Luz called you doc and you didn’t even look up. Things change, huh?) You saved my life, Gene. I mean it. I’ll always be grateful for that._

_Things have changed here, too. Or I’ve changed. Or both. My old boyfriend Roger moved to Texas. Two of the guys in my circle were killed—one was in the Navy and his ship sank. The other was working on a base in California and died in some kind of accident. Can you believe that? I wasn’t close to either of them but I’m still shook up that they’re gone. It’s strange being home too because some of my old friends, Dennis and Phil and Louis… they’re different. They’ve come to visit me a few times, but they think smaller than I remembered. They’re not interested in some of the things I want to talk about, not really interested in anything outside of Detroit. I wonder if I was the same way before I left. Chris was in the Air Force, and he gets it a little better, but still. It’s not the same. Maybe I’m expecting too much. Maybe having gay friends who lived with me 24/7, and went all over the world with me, and saved my life and probably would have died for me, has spoiled me._

_I miss you all terribly. Even if Chuck was the only one who really responded to my letters. Now that you’re home I expect_ _all of you_ _to be better, or else I’m going to have to come down to New Orleans. That’s a long way for a guy with a limp, and I’ll make you feel really guilty about it, so pick up a pen and write me whenever anything exciting happens. (Is Shelton back too? Will you tell me what his first name is?) Speaking of which, I got a letter from someone named Babe yesterday? He says you all told him to write me. He seems like a nice guy. But what kind of name is Babe anyway?_

_I’m also trusting on you to really tell me how everyone’s doing. Okay? Chuck told me that he couldn’t go into too much detail about what happened to everyone because of the censor, and anyway I should focus on getting better. Well, I am better, and I’m worrying myself to death over it. And I don’t know how much Luz would know. You’re the doc, I know you kept track._

_I saw the casualty list. I know Muck and Penkala didn’t make it. I’m really sorry to hear it. What about everybody else? Anyone too badly wounded?_

_I’ll be frank: how’s Joe? He’s only sent me maybe two or three letters. I get the sense that he’s not going to look me up when he gets back. That’s okay. Well, no, it’s not. I’m not_ _happy_ _about it. But I understand. I’m okay. I always knew—I don’t know what I knew. There was something about how he was with me, like he was happy and scared about being happy. I didn’t think it was going to last, not like the way you and Shelton are. I’ve had enough time to think about it and I’ll be all right if it doesn’t last. But I still want to know._

 _This is getting so long. I don’t want to end it, though. I miss you. I miss all of you. I sort of wish we could all go back to Toccoa and be together for a little while. At least if we can’t do that, I can write you huge long letters and you can write back and tell me_ _everything_ _. My mom’s school friends send each other letters sometimes where each person just adds on to the old letter and they mail them around in a circle. We’ll do that, too, so it’ll be like all four of us are talking again. (Five? Six? Babe mentioned somebody. How many queers have we collected now?) I’m so happy I met you guys. I remember the first day I realized Luz and Chuck were gay—I was sitting in the barracks writing a letter to Louis about how I was_ _hoping_ _that_ _maybe_ _there might be one or two gay guys in my unit. And it turns out there were, and they were some of the best friends I’d ever make. Who knew?_

 _Write back soon,_ _  
_ _Yours,_

_E Tipper_

 

_P.S. Guess what song came on the radio while I was looking for a stamp? My Buddy. You remember it, don’t you? My buddy, my buddy, your buddy misses you. Isn’t that funny?_

_Your buddy,_ _  
_ _Tip_

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [the only solace](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10529157) by [ideare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ideare/pseuds/ideare)




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